


Tattoo

by BurningTea



Series: The Blade's the Thing [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archangel Castiel, M/M, Post Darkness, Sigils, Smut, Sort of a threeway, The Veil, There's actually kissing in this one - I kid you not, Vessels, anyway, as far as I write it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:30:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 37
Words: 54,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean tries to function normally as new monsters appear, monsters no-one can work out. Things with Sam are...moving along, they've been working on building their connections with the people they have left, and at least some of these new monsters are easy to kill. It doesn't get rid of the constant ache that's been left behind by Cas giving himself up to bind the Darkness. </p><p>As Sam and Dean start to unravel the mystery of the new creatures, Dean finds a faint hope that he can get Cas back, but it might cost more than he can pay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ready

Dean lands on his back, the air knocked from him, and lashes out with his legs as best he can in the tight space. He connects, the jar through his shins speaking of the power in his attacker, the force with which it’s attacking. 

He hears a thud and there’s no more fight. Must have caught it just right, dropped it. A lucky hit, what with being stuck between two pieces of heavy furniture. He can’t see anything other than dark wood and a cracked ceiling.

He’s wedged, he realises, his shoulders pressed too tightly in the cramped space. 

“Dean?” Sam’s voice rings too loudly in the silence after the fight.

Seconds later, he’s peering down at Dean, his expression partway between battle-focused and bemused. 

“Need a hand?” he asks, after a long enough pause that he’s likely assured himself Dean’s not badly hurt.

Dean lets Sam pull him up. Truth be told, he’s not sure he could manage it on his own, anyway. Rolling his right shoulder, he presses down on it with his left hand, wincing. He is way past too old to be getting flung against walls and onto floors. 

“You get the other one?” he asks.

Sam nods, staring down at the mangled pile of fur on the floorboards. Already, it’s starting to stink. 

“Do we even know what it is?” Dean asks, because this is something he hasn’t seen before, and he’s travelled through purgatory. Monster-central, and never has Dean seen one of these vicious hairballs before.

“Whatever they are,” Sam says, which means he still hasn’t found anything in their books or on the internet or through his growing list of connections, “they go down hard.”

Which is something to be thankful for, at least. Fast, brutal, but once knocked down they just…dissolve. There’ll be no bone in the thing now, no teeth or claws or anything but mushed, rotting flesh and that fur. It doesn’t make any sense. 

“They are the weirdest fuckers I have seen in a long time,” Dean decides, and resigns himself to the part of the hunt where he has to drag the thing out and burn it, or bury it, or fling it off a cliff. Just so long as it stays out of the public eye. The public is still chewing over the dark lines that split people into corpses, discussing on a seemingly endless loop what it could have been and why it’s stopped. The public doesn’t need new monster corpses to freak out over any more than it ever has. 

Sam’s quiet as they work, and he stays quiet even when they’re back in the Impala, the road vanishing beneath them as they roll out of town. It’s far enough to the bunker that they’ll need to stop on the way, or trade off driving, but there’s no sense of urgency. These things are a puzzle, and neither one of them likes puzzles of the monster variety, but these are only the third new monster they’ve faced in the six months since…in the last six months. Sam can speculate all he likes there’s a connection, and there quite likely is, but the things aren’t exactly tearing the world apart. 

Regular hunts are about as steady as they ever were, Dean’s told. He wouldn’t know. He’s found himself less and less willing to haul ass across the country to hack and slash and kill. It’s unsettling, like walking back into an old, familiar room after a long absence and finding it’s been changed. Only the room is his own life, or maybe him, and he can’t quite put his finger on what’s been moved. 

“Any news from Garth?” Dean asks, as he pulls off the highway in search of a motel. Driving through the night has lost its appeal, as well. A lot of things have. “Or Krissy? What about Cole?”

“Cole?” Sam shifts in the seat until he’s facing Dean, a careful look on his face. It’s a look Dean’s seen a lot lately. “Are you sure you didn’t mean someone else?”

That’s another thing: the names. Dean grimaces and keeps his eyes on the road. For all Sam knows, he did mean Cole. Hell, for all he knows he meant Cole. It’s just, his brain keeps throwing up names that have no business being in a conversation. At least this time he didn’t ask if Sam had heard from Bobby. 

It’s like some part of Dean’s brain is deleting all the deaths, the goodbyes, even the times people have come close to being friends and have instead gone running. Last night, he almost sent a text to Charlie. Sam doesn’t need to know about that.

“No,” Sam says. “No news. Last I heard, no-one can find anything on these new creatures.”

“You still don’t think it’s Eve, do you?” After all, Michael resurfaced. Dean wouldn’t put it past the universe to cycle through more old hits. 

“Hannah says Purgatory’s not been breached,” Sam says. There’s a pause before the next bit. “Crowley says the same.”

Yeah. Crowley. An old hit that refused to ever fade completely. He’s going through another phase of turning up at random, always with a look for Dean that makes a bottle of bourbon seem like a really good idea. That, and leaving. 

“So, bottom line is we don’t know squat.” Dean pulls the Impala into a motel that looks like it might at least have a better class of bedbug and taps his fingers on the steering wheel. “But no more have sprung up?”

“Not that I’ve heard of,” Sam says. “We’re clear for now.”

They lapse into silence again, Sam heading off to get them a couple of rooms and Dean getting their bags from the car. They haven’t shared a room since the Darkness was sorted. Dean’s starting to get used to being in a motel room alone. Almost.

“They’re not next to each other,” Sam says when he returns, handing Dean his key and slapping it against his leg, like he isn’t sure if they’re calling it a night right now. 

“Right,” Dean says. “Well, I guess that’ll mean less chance of having to hear you snore.”

He manages a laugh at Sam’s look. It tastes nothing like humour. 

He could ask Sam to watch a film with him, maybe order some pizza, but Sam’s got his research bag tucked under his arm, a clear enough sign he’ll be using the evening to keep on with digging for any ideas on this new wave of beasts. If three lots counts as a wave. A wavelet, maybe. 

“I’ll see you in the morning, Sammy,” Dean offers after a few too many beats of silence, and he takes off before it can get awkward, making it into the room without looking back.

Not looking back is a skill Dean’s been perfecting, and he’s sure that one day he’ll master it. 

For now, he flings himself down on the bed as soon as he’s secured the room for the night, changing the channel on the T.V. to something about aliens building the Aztec civilisation, because apparently there are people out there who think the Aztecs couldn’t create their own culture and all that went with it. In any case, it’s easy enough to stare at, easy enough to let become white noise in his ears and in his eyes and in his mind. 

Anything at all had to be better than letting his own thoughts take over.

He feels himself droop into drowsiness long before the excitable expert on the screen finished spouting on about whatever garbled evidence he has, and he drags the covers over himself before he nods off completely. 

As usual, he lets himself have one moment of weakness, staring into the dark behind his own eyelids, the coarse fabric of the pillow pushing at his cheek.

“Night, Cas,” he whispers.

The words taste heavy and brittle. Meaningless. He spits them out and lets another day drip away.


	2. Chapter 2

He dreams of Charlie.

It’s not the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last. She’s taken to popping up in his dreams, that look on her face that says he isn’t fooling her but she’ll let him pretend he is, and they take walks past tents and knights gearing up for war. It’s not LARPing. It’s real war. The stench of it is all around him, and Dean spends the whole dream itching to get his hands on a sword and dive into the fighting, wherever it is. Charlie won’t let him.

“Not your fight,” she says, pulling him back whenever he heads towards a sword. “Not every fight is your fight.”

He doesn’t believe her. He stays away from the swords anyway. 

Tonight, they make it to the river, to where the sparkling silver of the water runs under moonlight. It doesn’t matter that the water looks more like an animation than anything else. This is a dream. Dreams are meant to be weird.

Charlie tugs him to sit down with her on the bank, and he does. Might as well. He watches as she lifts one knee and tucks her chin down onto it, her arms wrapped around her own shin. Her hair is longer again. It varies.

“You doing okay?” she asks, at last. 

“Sure,” he says. 

“You know you can tell me, right?” she asks. “If you want to, that is. Can’t be easy. I mean, he’s everywhere down there, isn’t he? But he might as well be nowhere.”

Dean nods. It’s not the first time she’s said something like this, either, this dream version of his adopted little sister. Another person he’s lost. 

“Not like I can do anything about it,” he says. “And Cas… Cas always had this thing about redeeming himself, like he had any damn need to.”

He speaks to his own hands. Might as well. None of this is real, anyway. 

Charlie makes a noise that might mean she agrees. 

“Besides,” Dean goes on, “it’s not like he’s dead. Not really. Like you say, he’s everywhere.” He tries for a laugh. “Makes a whole bunch of stuff awkward, if I think about it too much.”

“Doesn’t stop it being lonely, though, does it?” Charlie asks. “Doesn’t stop you from missing him.”

She’s said this before, too. Dean gives up and stretches himself out on his back. Charlie said Cas is everywhere down there, on Earth. Wherever this is, Dean can feel that Cas is no part of it. In a way, it’s restful. In a way, it would be more restful if Cas was really lost. He might as well be lost. In all their research, in all the begging of Hannah and Crowley and anyone Dean’s been able to summon or track down or speak to, there’s no way to pull Cas apart from the Darkness. That potential has been spread throughout the Earth, and Cas with it. They’re one and the same, according to Hannah. Cas is creation. 

It’d be nice though, if it meant anything except Cas being gone. 

Charlie’s still talking, but Dean lets the words wash over him. At least here he isn’t having to keep up a brave face for Sam. Sam’s not over how close he came to cutting Cas to pieces, and truth be told Dean’s nowhere near close to over it, either, but they’ve been working on moving on. They’ve both got plenty to move on from. 

They sit on the bank for hours. It might be hours. Not like it matters. The sounds of battle filter through the trees, less invasive than the stink, and Dean feels he should be more bothered by it. He still twitches a bit, still finds his fingers curling round a blade that isn’t there, but he’s mostly calm. Mostly peaceful. 

“You should find him,” Charlie says, long after Dean thinks the conversation has stopped.

“What?” he asks, not bothering to open his eyes.

“You should find him,” Charlie repeats. “He always helped you. Always. And you miss him. So, you should find him.”

“Not that simple, Charlie,” Dean says. He has to press his eyes with the heels of his hand to keep them closed. 

“Then make it simple,” she says. As though that’s all Dean has to do.

“Charlie,” Dean groans. “Charlie, no.”

“Why not? What’s so hard about it? You miss him. So get him back. Don’t you think he misses you, too?”

Dean’s heart lurches. Cas missing him? Cas is part of the ground, part of the rocks and the water and the earth. He’s managed not to imagine what or how Cas feels. The idea that Cas might be aware, on any level, that he might be missing Dean…

“So what?” he asks, his words gruff. “Doesn’t make it any more possible. He’s all tied up with it, Charlie. We start picking away at it, it could all unravel. We could end up unleashing the Darkness.” Again. He doesn’t add the last bit. Doesn’t need to. “You think Cas would want me to undo all that?”

“I think what Cas wants has never really been something Cas has got to have,” Charlie says.

There’s no heat to the words. They burn anyway.

Dean wakes up with tears on his cheeks, and scrubs them away long before he meets Sam for breakfast.


	3. Chapter 3

The scrape of the spoon pulls at the pulse of pain in Dean’s temple, and he glares at Sam, at the cup of coffee, until his brother notices and stops. 

“You not sleep well?” Sam asks. There’s a tinge to Sam’s skin that says he’s short of rest himself, but he’s taken to checking in with Dean. By their new, partly unspoken rules, Dean lets Sam do more of that. 

“Could have been better.” Which isn’t a lie. They’ve agreed not to lie. Doesn’t mean Dean has to tell him everything. He’s building on what he can stand to say, but this, with…with Charlie… It’s not one of those things that counts as needing to be shared. “You?”

Sam shrugs. His eyes are grey, shading to green at the edges. They’re mood-stones, those eyes, and Dean reads the worry in them, the concern. Dean can’t do anything to shift it, to change their colour. He hasn’t got a clue how to go about fixing himself on this one. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, because there’s nothing else to say. Sam has his own regrets to wrestle with. “So, we got any more calls, or are we making a straight shot back to the bunker?”

“Rap called,” Sam says. “Something weird going on over near her. People are reporting all sorts of things and she can’t find a pattern, but it’s something.”

“Rap?” It’s one of the new names, the ones Sam’s been talking about and driving off to meet on the days when Dean can’t…when he just can’t. He gets no mental image of this one. Maybe he’s never met her. 

“Yeah. It’s out of our way, but she’s pretty new to this. Lost someone to… Anyway, she’d like some help.”

Lost them to the Darkness, then. Dean swallows, looks away. He addresses his next words to his hands.

“Right. Sure. You okay to drive?”

Sam doesn’t comment, just lets Dean slide into the passenger seat and stare at the road as it passes. This is something they’ve barely breached, yet. The guilt. They’re both weighed down with it, one way or another. 

It’s a near silent drive for hours, stopping only once or twice when necessary, and they pull to a stop on a quiet residential street as night is falling. 

“How’d you meet her, anyway?” Dean asks, gripped by a sudden need to know at least something before they walk into this woman’s house. 

“She was tracking a werewolf out near New York. Turned out Garth was already on it,” Sam says, his attention on a small home tucked behind trailing bushes and tall trees. 

“We’re nowhere near New York,” Dean points out, because that’s clean the other side of the country.

Sam nods.

“Yeah. She was on some conference. Writing thing. She writes.”

Chuck drifts into Dean’s mind, and he winces. Just don’t let this Rap be like Chuck. Dean isn’t even sure if the pain is for the guy himself, or for the fact he’s gone missing, is probably dead, and they have no real idea what happened to him. Another one they left behind. 

The night air is cold, biting, and the street is quiet. It’s easy to pretend the world wasn’t on the brink of ending so recently. Again. The door they stand in front of is faded green, spider-web cracks in the pain. Dean glances away.

Sam’s knock is answered quickly, the woman on the other side looking up at them from under rust-red hair. It’s obviously dyed, but Dean gets the feeling she isn’t trying to hide it. The lines around her eyes speak of someone older than Dean was expecting, closer to Bobby’s age than theirs. Not that they’re so young anymore. 

“You must be Dean,” she says, her voice deep and throaty. “And Sam. So good to see you again.”

She steps forward and reaches up, gathering Sam into a hug despite being a good foot shorter than him. 

“Come on in. Get warmed up.”

They follow her into a kitchen that’s taken advantage of a full paint chart and settle with mugs of something hot and herbal. Rap pulls out a notebook and taps an open page.

“I’ve got everything I have together, but it’s not much. Lots of different accounts.”

“Any deaths?” Dean asks.

She shakes her head.

“No yet, but some people are badly banged up. Broken ribs, cuts, bruises. A concussion. One guy had his leg shattered. It’ll be a long while before he walks again. If he walks. Mainly, people are freaked out.”

“And what’s doing the freaking?” Dean asks. They’re going to need something more solid to work on. 

Rap pulls a face and flips the pages of the notebook.

“Pick an account, get a different answer. Something with wings, something with claws, something formless, some kind of great, pulling force…”

“How do you know it’s all the same thing?” Sam asks. 

“There’s one thing the same in all of them,” she says. “In every one, no matter what else they experience or how they end up, they all hear the same thing. They don’t agree whether it’s a man, a woman, a kid. But they all hear the same words.” She looks at each of them, Sam first. Her eyes are a warm brown. “They all hear the voice call for the same person.”

“What do they say?” Sam asks.

She doesn’t look at him. Instead, she turns the notebook and pushes it over the table to Sam, who bites back some sound or other and passes it right to his brother. 

Underlined in the middle of the page are three words.

'Bring me Dean'.


	4. Chapter 4

The words throb in Dean’s head. He reaches out a hand, touches his index finger to the paper just shy of the final ‘n’.

“No. It’s not him.”

His voice is rough and he doesn’t care if Rap’s looking at him strangely. He needs to get this one thing straight before this goes any further. It’s not Cas. 

“You don’t know that,” Sam says.

“You really think Cas would be doing this to people?”

“Cas has done this to people. Or something like it. Remember Pam? Remember all the people he killed when he was playing God?” Sam sounds insistent. Not cruel, though, or harsh. There’s no lingering anger there at any of the actions he lists. “Dean, we don’t know what state Cas is in now. Maybe this is something he can’t control.”

“Or maybe it’s not him.”

Dean shoves the notebook back across the table, pushing himself to his feet and glancing at Rap.

“There a bar around here?” 

“There’s one of those places that pretends to be an Irish Pub a few blocks down. Why? You needing a pint?” she asks. She looks at Sam as though wanting his input, but gets nothing. “Turn right at the end of the street. You can’t miss it.”

“Great. And you say loads of people have witnessed this thing, right? So I might run into a few. I’ll go see if I can get us any more information.”

Dean turns to leave before Sam can point out that turning up to a random bar in the hopes he’ll find a witness is ridiculous, that they already have a list of names they can check out in the morning. Rap speaks up too quickly to escape it.

“Harvey might be there. He hangs out at Finley’s sometimes. Look out for a guy with dark hair and scruff. Actually,” she pauses, and Dean looks back to see her chewing her lip. “Actually, he’ll probably find you.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Dean gets out of the house as quickly as he can. Sam can give him hell in the morning and he’ll take it. Storming off is one of those things they’ve started to discuss. Just now, he needs to be away from that notepad with its words. Because he can see what Sam’s thinking, and it’s dangerous. Whatever this is, it isn’t Cas. Cas is gone. 

The street is so quiet it rings, silence filling his ears like the tolling of a bell, and Dean stamps a drumbeat with his boots in an effort to fill the space with something. Anything. It’s all been empty space lately, and it’s far past too much.

He reaches the bar with his mind still churning and steps into the noise and warmth with relief. It’s dark wood and low music burbling in the background, the kind of thing that gives the impression it’s been on this spot for hundreds of years when the outside speaks of a few decades at best. He makes his way to the bar and slides onto a stool, catching the bartender’s eye. The guy’s about to get him a shot of bourbon when a voice from Dean’s right interrupts.

“Don’t bother with that shit, Ben. Get him the good stuff.”

The bartender pauses with the mouth of the bottle an inch from Dean’s glass, an eyebrow raised at the newcomer.

“The ‘good stuff’?” he asks. “How good are we talking?”

“For my new friend here?” the newcomer says. “Come on, Ben. Be welcoming.”

Ben nods and turns away, reaching for a bottle from a higher shelf, and Dean turns to the man next to him with a smirk.

“You do this for every stranger?” he asks.

He’s met with dark eyes and darker lashes. The quirk on the man’s lips is almost enough to rival Dean at his best. Almost. 

“Only the handsome ones,” he says. “You get drinks everywhere you go?”

Dean lets the familiar rhythm of flirting take over, pushing the ringing, screaming silence in his head to the back, and picks up the now full glass. He brings it to his nose and savours the aroma, the sort of thing he’d just started to let himself have before the Mark took over and made everything taste like nothing.

“Not ones this good,” he says, and takes a sip. 

He’s still holding the guy’s gaze, knows what kind of signal that’s sending. It’s been a while since someone’s come on to him like this, and the distraction’s welcome. Besides, he can’t have this guy, no matter how arresting his eyes are, thinking Dean’s the sort to be out-charmed. 

“Shame,” the man says. He breaks eye contact, but it’s not a sign he’s giving in. He trails his gaze down Dean’s body and back up, the interest clear. “So few people have taste these days. Mind if I join you?”

“Kind of thought you already had.”

Dean has to give the guy points for confidence. He leans an elbow on the bar and takes the time to check out this man who thinks he can give Dean Winchester a run for his money. A blue shirt, a suede jacket, dark jeans on admittedly strong looking thighs. Pretty decently turned out for a bar in a small town on a week night. His hair’s dark and styled to look windswept, and he’s got stubble along his jaw.

“Let me guess,” Dean says. “Harvey?”

The guy blinks. His surprise is well covered, but it’s there, before he leans back in and looks up at Dean in a way Dean’s used himself in the past, when he’s needed to. 

“You’ve heard of me,” Harvey says, as though this is the best news he’s had all year. “Puts me at a disadvantage.”

“Oh, buddy,” Dean says. “You were already at a disadvantage.” He winks. 

Three drinks in they move to a booth. Harvey’s thigh presses against Dean’s and he lets it. There’s no rule he can’t mix in a bit of fun with work, and he does steer the conversation to the mystery messenger. Eventually. 

By this point, Harvey’s taken to trailing two fingers up and down Dean’s forearm, leaving a tingling trail that Dean assumed has worked on people in the past. 

“You, er, you heard any of those stories people have been telling?” Dean asks, the hitch in his voice unexpected. But Harvey does seem to be good at this, whatever he ends up knowing about some monster.

Harvey’s eyes shift, his attention moving from his own fingers against Dean’s skin to Dean’s face. He looks puzzled, his brows pinching.

“Stories?”

His voice is lower, too. Dean would think this bar was one of the kind filled with smoke if the air weren’t so clear. 

“Yeah. You know. Wing-beats, claws, words from beyond the veil. I’m staying with a friend of mine. She said people have been talking crazy for a few weeks. Something in the water?”

Harvey strokes his fingers up Dean’s arm one more time and stills, settling his palm near Dean’s inner elbow. He sounds thoughtful.

“Not so sure those are stories.” 

Dean waits, watching as Harvey’s gaze drifts into the middle distance, and sure enough the guy starts up again, any seduction gone from his voice. 

“Whatever it is, it’s not made up. Not drink, either.”

“No?”

“No. I was sober. On the way home from the gym.”

Dean opens his eyes wide and leans in, brushing a hand along Harvey’s jaw and tilting the guy’s head back to face him. Harvey’s lips part, just a bit, but Dean doesn’t move any closer. 

“What did you see?” he asks, playing up the interest. 

There’s no real need for it. Rap said nothing about Harvey being a difficult witness and Dean knows this is as much him reacting to what was in that notebook as it is anything else, but skills need using to be kept sharp, and next time it might be someone who does need a little Winchester magic to get them talking. In any case, Harvey doesn’t pull away. Dean feels the words rumble up through his skin as he speaks. It’s oddly intimate.

“Nothing. No.” His eyes narrow and he tilts his head, pressing his cheek more firmly into Dean’s hand. “Not quite nothing. I could see the night sky, but there were too many stars, and they were everywhere. Then…then there was pressure, like I was surrounded by something huge, only I could still see those stars. I swear, by the time that voice spoke to me, I felt like I’d been studied down to my soul, even though I was on my own.”

“This voice,” Dean says, “what did it sound like?”

“I’ve got no idea,” Harvey says. “It was more like the words were pressed into my skull, you know? Like, I didn’t hear them. I experienced them.”

His expression sharpens, some of the light returning to his eyes, and his lips pull up at one side.

“Got some other things I’d like to experience.”

Turning his head, he kisses Dean palm, near the base of his thumb, and when Dean doesn’t pull away, he plants another kiss on the wrist, a third a few inches up Dean’s forearm. With his lips still on Dean’s skin, he smiles at him, his eyes slanting sideways to connect. 

“What do you say?”

Dean doesn’t say anything. He blanks out all thought of stars filling the sky and wraps his hand around the back of Harvey’s head. When their lips meet, he manages to persuade himself that he’s only thinking of Harvey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First time I've written about Dean kissing someone, and I do this. It is still Destiel end-game, don't worry. 
> 
> Should Dean get in some practice with Harvey next chapter, though? I do need the practice with broadening my writing.


	5. Chapter 5

Harvey’s place turns out to be close by, and they get there before Dean breaks out of the need to be close to someone, to feel something. He has the feeling he’s racing just ahead of a wave of guilt that has no place existing, not really. Not like…not like any promises were ever made. Hell, Dean never even realised…

Anyway, it’s too late, now.

Harvey’s hair is soft between his fingers and Harvey’s muscles are firm under his hands, and Dean winds his right hand through the dark strands as his left smooths up under that dark blue shirt, over the taut stomach and along Harvey’s ribcage. He has Harvey pressed against the wall just inside the front door and this, just this, could be enough. The warm tension of another body against his is almost enough to keep his thoughts in the moment. 

Breaking the kiss, Harvey squeezes Dean’s upper arm and nods further into the house.

“This is fun and all,” he says, huskier now than at the bar, clearly having to gather his breath, “but what say we take it to the bedroom?”

Dean hesitates. His hands still, but he leaves them where they are, the one hand buried in Harvey’s hair and the other under his clothes. 

“Hey,” Harvey releases his grip on Dean’s arm, the hold turning to gentle circles rubbed across the fabric of Dean’s jacket. “This is only fun if we’re both into it. You want to stop?”

The charm and smirking fall away and it’s now that Dean is struck by the knowledge this is a real person, with real hopes and fears and interests. It makes this whole thing real. He doesn’t want real. He’s taken aback to find he does still want Harvey. 

“No,” he says, “No, I don’t want to stop.” 

Holding eye contact, he slides his left hand around to Harvey’s back, down until he reaches the curve of his spine, and pushes his whole body against the other man, grinding his hips in a fluid roll. Harvey gasps and grips Dean again, his eyes intent.

“Good,” he says on a breath. “That’s great. Bedroom?”

Dean releases him and Harvey leads the way, bringing them to a room with a mattress, which is all Dean cares about. He doesn’t take in the bed-frame or the walls or anything else. Instead, he lets Harvey take over, pushing Dean’s jacket off his shoulders and undoing the buttons of Dean’s button-down. They kiss as each item drops to the floor, and Harvey steps back once he has Dean naked from the waist up, something of the smirk creeping back onto his features.

“Really glad you went with keeping going,” he says. “Speaking as a man who enjoys the finer things in life, you are definitely top shelf.”

With Harvey’s eyes on him, Dean feels his cheeks warm and looks away, just for a moment, before flicking his gaze back up, his head still tilted down so he looks up at Harvey even though the other man is an inch or so shorter. He knows he must look shy, bashful even. Harvey seems okay with it. 

“Top shelf?” Dean asks. “That apply to you, too?”

Harvey blinks, his eyes narrowing a fraction as though checking over what Dean means, and his smile grows. There’s only the light spilling in from the hallway and it catches Harvey’s eyes, adding a warm sheen to the brown when Dean steps in closer and take his turn at pushing off clothing. 

“Right now, I’m thinking top,” Harvey says. 

There’s the slightest catch in his voice, something that makes Dean think the guy’s not quite as suave as he was coming across in the bar. That’s okay. Dean’s not a smooth as he’s pretending to be, either, not when it comes to this. Whatever this is. It’s hardly the first time he’s gone home with a guy he’s just met, but he hasn’t done it in a while. It’s not the first time he’s found himself making comparisons, either, but he’s not going to think of Harvey’s eyes being a different colour. He’s not going to think about how the hair is right, just a bit longer than it ought to be. Although, a few years back… 

No. He’s here, with Harvey, who’s standing shirtless now, unbuckling Dean’s belt. With Harvey, who has a question in his eyes. 

“Yeah,” Dean says. “That’s fine by me.”

The belt slides through each loop and falls free, hitting the floor with the other things they don’t need. He takes over, watching Harvey step back, biting his lip, as Dean puts on a bit more of a show than he generally does these days. There’s something about this one, though, some extra spice to the warmth between them that’s crept up on Dean over the last couple of hours. It isn’t just his usual pride that wants this to be good.

The flush on Harvey’s face as he takes in Dean is heady. 

“Your turn,” Dean says. 

And Harvey is worth seeing. Whatever the guy does to stay fit, it works. He’s got a lean frame to go with that mess of hair and deep eyes. 

Dean watches Harvey close the space between them, tilts his head the way Harvey’s guides him to and accepts the kiss, feeling the gentle bite on his lower lip and hearing the low growl in Harvey’s throat. He lets Harvey move him backwards until he feels the bed at his back, and then he’s under Harvey, the warmth and press of flesh better than he anticipated. 

Harvey skims a hand along Dean’s side, caressing him, and Dean arches into it, throwing his head back and exposing his throat. His skin tingles at the open mouthed kisses trailed along it, up under his jaw, back to his mouth. When Harvey settles his full weight on Dean, that’s even better. 

It feels like hours before Harvey reaches into the draw by the bed, searching Dean’s eyes as he resettles himself and nudges at Dean’s leg. It’s days from then until Harvey finally slides into Dean, biting his own lip again as though Dean is almost too much, and it’s much too soon that it’s over.

Harvey gets a wash-cloth and insists on cleaning them both up, smiling through a comment about treating a guest right. Dean feels like the guy’s handling him with more care than he deserves, but he’s jagged enough these days that he lets himself have this. 

When Harvey’s done, and tucks himself into bed, Dean lets himself be wrapped in warm arms, the long line of a living body right up against his back. He falls asleep to the sound of another man’s breathing and doesn’t dream at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, this, THIS, is my first ever fanfic smut - and it may actually only be smut-adjacent, but you don't know how much it took to get to this. I started my first fic, Some Things, partly to help me learn to write more explicit stuff, and over 100,000 words into that one...no actual smut. Then I wrote Marked Earth. Same thing. And part of Tiny Impala...and only implied smut. 
> 
> What I'm saying is, let me know how I did. 
> 
> If I get more confident, there may then be smut all over the shop. A veritable smutocopia.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny, tiny chapter! More of the chapterlet.

Rich coffee brings Dean back to wakefulness, the scent of it wafting through from somewhere in the house. 

It takes a moment to work out where he is and this time he takes in the room. The walls are a muted chocolate, the carpet is some deep cream, and everything in the place speaks of that taste Harvey boasted about. Dean immediately feels like he’s dirtying the place up.

He’s throbbing in a way that says his body isn’t used to last night’s action anymore, but it grounds him. Harvey brought him back here. Harvey treated Dean like something special and worthy and that coffee smells too damn good to run away from. Quelling his usual need to be up and out, Dean pulls on enough clothing to be decent and pads off in search of the coffee.

He finds it in the kitchen, sitting in a huge cream mug in Harvey’s hand. 

“Hey,” Harvey says, the warmth of his smile just as good as last night, if less seductive. 

His hair is brushed back, almost a mane of dark strands without whatever gel was holding it last night, and Harvey’s pulled on a pair of slate-grey jogging pants and nothing else. A trail of fine, dark hairs pulls Dean’s gaze further down than he meant for it to go. 

“You sleep well?” Harvey asks, and the extra note of smugness in his voice tells Dean that he’s noticed the lingering stare.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, really good. Thanks.” 

He’s only just getting up to speed with Sam asking him every day. Still, he remembers from Lisa that the rules are different when you’ve slept next to someone. 

“You?”

Harvey holds out the mug and Dean takes it, cradling it in his hands. It takes him a moment to realise Harvey has leaned in, his mouth close to Dean’s. In the morning light, his eyes are rich and welcoming. 

“Just fine,” Harvey says. “Better than I have in ages.”

Dean tilts his head and the gap closes. He can’t say who moves, but the press of lips is a comfort. It’s brief and then it’s done, but the sense of…something lingers. 

The coffee tastes as good as it smells, and Dean finds himself agreeing to breakfast. He doesn’t even complain when the pancakes turn up with fruit on. Harvey comments on being out of cream.

“And if I had some, I could think of better things to be doing with it,” he says, winking. 

Dean’s almost sad to head out, hovering in the doorway with hand wrapped around his phone in his pocket. He turns to go, stops, bites his lip. This is a case. Harvey’s a witness. He’s already let it go too far. Besides, even though that guilt hasn’t hit him, he knows this can only be an interlude. It isn’t fair to drag the guy into anything-

“Any chance we could meet up again?” Harvey asks, sliding his hand around the back of Dean’s neck and bringing himself in for another kiss. He doesn’t move far away when the kiss is done. “Anything tastes as good as you, a man would be plain stupid not to try for another bite.”

“Buddy, I am not food,” Dean says, but he feels his lips twitch into a smile. Harvey manages to say those lines in a way that makes them sincere.

“No,” Harvey agrees, as though it has more meaning than it does. 

Dean leaves his number.


	7. Chapter 7

Sam’s at the same table when Dean gets back, his hair all over his face and a drained look to his skin.

“You get any sleep?” Dean asks.

The look Sam shoots him makes him stop. 

“Not much,” Sam says. “And you? Where did you sleep?”

The tone is sharp, but Sam’s eyes are worried. Remembering everything they’ve talked about in the last few months, Dean bites back his first response and clings to the peace and welcome he feels from being at Harvey’s.

“Ran into that witness. He let me stay at his place.” Dean taps on the edge of the kitchen counter as he talks, turning his head so he isn’t quite looking at Sam. He doesn’t think Harvey left any marks, and in theory he doesn’t care if Sam knows what he was up to, but… “You had any coffee?”

Sam gestures at the tall mug next to him, but agrees to more when Dean offers. 

Rap walks in as Dean fills Sam’s mug, but waves away the offer of any for herself. She dumps a bag on the table and digs around in it, pulling leeks and potatoes and a chicken out and forming piles of groceries on top of the research notes Sam’s got spread out. Sam pulls his coffee closer and frowns. 

“Don’t pull that face, Sam,” Rap says absently, “You don’t want it to stick that way.”

“I think that already happened years back,” Dean says, before he can stop himself. He grins, but there’s as much apology in it for the habitual jab than there is actual mirth. Some things take longer to break than others.

Sam’s lips press together and he stands, rolling his head and rubbing his neck. He looks like he’s spent all night at the table. Dean hopes that’s a false impression. The warmth from Harvey lingers and he wants everyone to feel better, more content. 

“Are we done researching, then?” Sam asks. His fingers twitch. It’s clear he wants to rescue the papers from beneath the vegetables and bags of flour. 

Rap glances up at him and smiles, those lines radiating from her eyes. She doesn’t act as old as Bobby had been, but she does have the assurance, the solidity that Bobby had. 

“You are,” she says. “You can have barely had your head on the pillow before you were up again. Go and catch forty winks and I’ll call you when it’s time to eat. No. No arguing. Your brother looks rested. He can take over. Anyway, you’ll have some fresh ideas from talking to Harvey, I’ll be bound.”

She throws this last bit at Dean, who gets caught on her gaze. It’s far too knowing. 

Not seeming to realise, Sam grumbles and stretches out a hand for a sheet of paper. He yelps when Rap taps his hand with the handle of a wooden spoon.

“Nope,” she says. “Bed. Off with you.”

There are some things even Sam can’t stand against, and he grumbles his way out of the room in the direction of what must be a bedroom. 

“How late was he up?” Dean asks, when his brother’s muttered complaints have faded away.

“Late enough,” Rap says. “He’ll get some sleep now he know you’re home safe.” She gathers the carrots together and looks critically across the table, as though it’s letting her down. “I take it you had a good time with Harvey?”

Dean starts, his mouth opening to defend…he doesn’t know what. There’s nothing to defend. It’s not like he’s done anything wrong. Not really. 

“Harvey stopped by the grocery store when I was there. Picked up a few things.” The look she gives Dean is meaningful. “Pretty sure from the way he was beaming that he had a fun time last night, and from the looks of it he’s hoping for a second date.”

“Hey, it wasn’t a date,” Dean says, stung. A date implies romance, feelings. What he does with his body is up to him, whatever that niggling voice in the back of his mind tries to tell him, but feelings… That seems different. Still, he can’t help the flow of warmth up through his body at the thought of Harvey wanting to see him again. He’s becoming a sap in his old age.

“Date, encounter, whatever,” Rap says, as though it really makes no difference to her at all. “It’s good to see him happy. He may put on the smooth act, and believe me I’ve seen him do it, but he’s a good lad underneath. Had enough to deal with. So,” she goes on, clapping her hands together in the international signal of someone about to give someone else some work, “what say you we peel the spuds while I get started on the chicken?”

“And by ‘we’,” Dean says, “you mean me?”

“You’re quick,” Rap laughs. “I’ve got to give you that.”

He runs through what Harvey told him about the presence as they peel and chop, the rhythm soothing, and Rap purses her lips. 

“The stars are new,” she says. “Can’t remember anyone else mentioning stars. And Harvey never mentioned it to me when I spoke to him, the scamp.”

“You already spoke to him?” Dean asks. It feels a little like a betrayal, that he didn’t get to Harvey first. Ridiculous. Rap knows Harvey. It’s not like it’ll be the first time she’s spoken to him. 

She shrugs and seems more interested in the two jars of spice she’s holding, her tone musing when she answers.

“A few days ago. I thought you might run into him, is all. Besides, it’s always nice to have a reason to go out when you’re feeling like it. Are you thinking you’ll see him again?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says. He wants to. He can feel the bubbling energy of wanting to see the guy again. It’s not like it’s bad, hanging out with the same person a couple of nights in a row. Nothing can come of it, but it’s good, sometimes, to pretend it could. As long as Harvey doesn’t get the wrong idea. “Maybe. So, er, you got any ideas on this creature yet? The stars thing help at all?”

“Not even a little bit,” Rap says. “Something that can have such an impact in so many ways, and now it drags the stars with it? Does that sound like anything you know?”

Stars and an impact. Yeah. It sounds like someone. But it can’t be him, so there’s no point in thinking about it. 

“Sorry to say, Sam and me, we’ve run into more than a few powerful demons, and gods. Hell, at this point we’ve probably pissed off everyone there is to piss off. Could be anything after me.”

“But you do think it’s after you?” she asks, her tone just a shade too casual. She sets one jar down and twists the lid of the other one, too obviously not looking at Dean.

He stills. He hasn’t really stopped to consider that one, just feels in his gut that it’s him. When isn’t it him? 

“Yeah. Pretty sure.”

“And why can’t it be this friend of yours?” Rap asks. 

Dean looks round and watches the side of her face, a thick tendril of hair spiraling across her cheek. 

“How do you-”

“Sam told me. Need to know what we’re up against, don’t we?”

“We’re not up against him. He’s gone.”

He knows being so abrupt is rude, when she’s putting them up in her home, cooking a meal for them to share, but she has no right… Sam had no right… Only, Cas was Sam’s friend, too. And much though it hurt, stings, Cas has been on the other side of the line before. But not this time. Cas gave himself up for good this time, and he did it, again, to save them all. 

“From what Sam tells me, this friend of yours has been gone before,” Rap says, and she must have strong nerves to still be rubbing spice in to the chicken as though this conversation weighs nothing. 

“ Not like this.”

He’s only been back for a while, but the kitchen is starting to feel like a cage, the sides pressing in on him. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he paces away from the table and ends up turning in a circle. This room is odd, has no windows. A hallway links it to the front of the house, another disappearing off into what must be an extension, and even though glass panels let in light from other rooms, it’s dimmer than it could be. It’s not helping with the sensation that he’s buried in here, needing air.

“Try the south end,” Rap says.

“What?” Dean squints at her, caught uneasily on the edge of a thought.

“Try the south end,” Rap repeats. “It’s where most of the, well, sightings, I suppose, have been.” She nods to the clock on the wall. “Food’ll be ready for about four. We’ll have an early tea, in case either of you want to be going out. Be back from checking things out by then.”

And she effectively switches him off. Dean gets the sense that, for her, he’s ceased to exist, written out of her narrative now that she’s decided he’s heading for a different scene.

It’s as good an idea as any. He leaves.


	8. Chapter 8

The south end of town turns out to be a few streets of pretty well put together houses and a whole lot of woodland. There are park, with more trees dotted about in clusters, and small lakes, but this town has more trees than it can possibly know what to do with.

Dean makes it through the first couple of streets without sensing anything, without hearing anything out of the ordinary, and he’s wandered through a couple of parks with nothing to report. It’s at the edge of the woods that he feels it.

Something’s tugging at him.

He lets it pull him under the branches and down the narrow, rutted track, his gait shifting to something closer to a true hunter’s stalk as he passes the gnarled trunks. It’s easier, in here, to expect the sort of thing Dean hunts.

Leaves crunch underfoot, almost echoing in the still air, and Dean narrows his eyes, tilts his head, really listens. There’s something here with him. Just because he can’t see it, doesn’t mean he’s imagining it. Years of tracking the kind of thing most people tell campfire stories about has taught him to trust that sense, which is why he spins in time to catch it. Whatever it is.

Harvey spoke of stars and a weight bearing down on him. Other reports mention chills, being pushed, claws, fangs. Dean sees none of that. Dean sees his father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapterlet! The tiniest chapter to every tiny!
> 
> Well, no. Actually, I am sure I have seen smaller. Maybe in A History of the World in Ten and a Half Chapters. Or maybe not. But you should read that anyway, as it has some great stuff in it. Or in Waterland - hmm. No. Perhaps not. But that is one of the best books in the English language. It has an entire chapter about eels. I actually do seriously mean it is one of the best. The way the different timelines interweave is masterful. He should so have won the Booker for that rather than Last Orders, but politics exists in the book world.
> 
> Anyway, what I'm saying is that this just feels like a bit that wants to be on its own, so more is being written, but this stands along.


	9. Chapter 9

“Dad?”

Dean can’t move. It’s shock. Must be. He feels pressed to the earth, fixed to it like ink on a page, an illustration without life or movement. That’s John Winchester. He stands between two trees, the branches forming an arch over his head, and his smiles at Dean, that smile he had on his face the last time Dean saw him, when John had just walked out of the hellgate. There’s nothing about him to suggest he’s a spirit. 

“Dean,” he says. His voice is warm. “Dean, I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Dad?” He’s lost his other words. 

“Took your time,” John says. He has his hands in his jacket pockets, his stance relaxed. “I was beginning to think you were slacking off. Got too important to save people, eh?”

John takes a step forwards, his eyes soft in a way they hardly ever were in life. Dean wants to move away. He can’t.

“Still, it’s good to see you, son. I hear you’ve been up to a lot over the years. Kept Sammy out of Hell, eh? For a while at least. Stopped the world from ending. Good for you.”

“Dad.” He opens and closes his mouth on empty air.

“Hasn’t made you much of a talker, then,” John says. “But that’s all right. Because now I’m here. And I can talk for you. Always did want my guidance, didn’t you, Dean? A good soldier always does need orders.”

John is closer again, so close Dean can see the lines on his skin. It startles him to realise his own skin may be as marked. More so. John has been dead longer than seems real. He’s been gone forever. 

“I’ll take it from here, son,” John says.

Dean tries. He does. He summons a shout, a roar, a plea, but he chokes up nothing. His limbs won’t obey him, won’t let him run or fight or defend. John is close, closer. John is stepping up to Dean, into Dean. John is occupying Dean’s space. 

And now Dean sees those stars. Now, he feels the pressure and sees the lights of a galaxy blazing above him, and they are nothing like the galaxies that studded Cas’ form. They are nothing like the endless lights that saw into him and accepted. These are search-lights, seeking out every flaw he carries as a scar, the silver-fine lines of lies and failures threading through his corpse. Because he is a corpse. He’s a dead man walking. A dead man speaking and fighting and fucking, when he should be worm’s meat long since. He’s nothing like he was meant to be.

The first shuddering gasp frees his voice, and he falls to his knees, hands clenching in dead leaves as tears streak his face. 

He’s Dean Winchester, and he’s nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tiny chapters! Woo. Woo. Tiny chapters! Woo Woo. 
> 
> (You've got to sing it to the tune of Crazy Horses. If that is a song. Did I make that up? This head-cold is what I am blaming all of this on.)


	10. Chapter 10

“Dean!”

Sam’s voice hits him, dragging him up from wherever he is. It’s dark, cold. He realises he’s shivering.

Movement and noise erupt near his head and warm hands pull him up from the ground, hoisting him partway up so that he’s nestled against something solid and soothing. A hand strokes over his hair. Not Sam. 

“Is he okay?”

That’s Sam.

“I don’t know. He’s freezing. Does he have epilepsy or anything? Has he had a fit? Passed out?”

And that’s…

“Harvey.” The name is thick and clotted in his mouth, but he gets it out. Mumbles it, really. 

“Yeah. It’s me. Do you hurt? Can you move? Should we move him?”

The last words are directed at someone else. Dean hears more noise than just two people should account for. How has Sam got a total stranger out looking for Dean, anyway? 

“Best not to,” another voice says. Rap. How many people are out here? “Sam, you want to check him over or shall I?”

Sam answers with a grunt and Dean feels a second pair of hands, these ones purposeful. It takes an age, his head throbbing as Sam assures himself Dean isn’t dying on the spot. At least, he doesn’t think he is. He can’t quite remember why he’s here, though. Was it some monster? Did he get it?

“We can move him,” Sam says. “At this point, we need to get him warmed up. Can you help me carry him?”

“No need. I’ve got it.” Harvey says, and Dean grimaces as he’s hoisted from the ground. 

Harvey cradles him, and if Dean had any more of his wits about him, he’d complain at being carried bridal style through the woods, by a guy he spent the night with, in front of his brother. He’s too dizzy to do that, though. He’s so dizzy, he-

He thinks he misses Harvey’s feet, but there goes any chance of a second night together. Who wants to take Dean to bed once they’ve narrowly avoided being thrown up on by him? No-one, that’s who. 

“Hey. Hey, you all right?” And Harvey has no right to sound so gentle, so caring. It was one night. “You think we can go on, now?”

Dean nods against Harvey’s chest and lets the scene around him dissolve. 

 

**************************************************

 

The next time he wakes up he lies still, breathing slowly, waiting for the spinning to stop. His head still throbs, his back hurts, and he feel bruised. He isn’t sure where. Just…bruised. 

“-ut we’ve got no clue what?” Sam asks.

“No,” Rap says. “Richard can’t see anything that clues us in to what it was. He’s dehydrated, needs to warm up, but other than that he’s fine.”

“He was gone for hours,” Sam says. “Dean doesn’t just pass out. Trust me, it takes more than that to level my brother.”

A faint flush of pride at the words is sucked down by cold shame. He did pass out and he doesn’t know why. He passed out, and Sam’s over there telling Rap that Dean’s tougher than he is. He wishes he could drift away again, just let it all pass him by. He doesn’t want to wake up.

“You should get some food,” Rap says. “The casserole’s in the oven.”

“No. No, I’ll eat later.”

“You’ll be more use to Dean and to yourself if you eat,” Rap says. “I’ll get you a bowl in case you feel hungry.”

Dean keeps his eyes closed as footsteps pass by him. There’s a pain building in his leg, closing in around his knee, and his breath hitches at the bite.

“Dean?” Sam says. 

The first set of footsteps halts and a second joins them. Dean pries his eyes open, taking a moment to let his vision stabalise, and peers up at Rap and Sam, standing side by side. If he wasn’t in such pain, he’d laugh. Rap’s tiny compared to Sam, her hair even more corkscrew than before. She crosses her arms across her chest and frowns.

“You stay right there. You need a bowl, too.”

She nods at Sam and leaves. Sam doesn’t seem to notice. He crouches next to the settee and puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder, gripping just that bit too tight.

“You okay?” he asks. “Rap had a doctor friend of hers come round and check you out, but he couldn’t find anything.”

Which is bullshit, because Dean’s hurt less after being thrown into a wall. He shakes his head.

“Don’t know what to tell you, Sammy,” he says, trying a smirk. “I’m indestructible.”

Sam doesn’t look reassured.

“Yeah, well. When you’re back on your feet, we need to talk about going off without back-up.” Sam pauses and Dean can almost see the deliberate change of gears. It grinds. “Then again, I suppose last night you didn’t really need my back-up.”

It’s Dean’s turn to frown. Sam blinks and has his own go at a smirk. It doesn’t look any more successful than Dean’s felt.

“I mean, it could have been awkward, having your brother along. I, er, I met Harvey.” Sam’s smile wavers and he glances away, his eyes tracking over the rest of Dean as though checking again that no pieces are missing. “He seems…nice.”

There’s a beat before Dean gathers an answer. He’s never really worked out whether Sam knows, and he is in no fit state to tackle it now. He needs the room to be properly still, first. 

“Yeah. He is. Did he…? Was he in the woods?”

It’s hazy, and he’s pretty sure he doesn’t like what he remembers. 

“Yeah. He helped find you. Rap got a few people out looking and Harvey was there right away. Soon as she called. He seems like a good guy, Dean.”

Dean nods. Now he can’t quite look at Sam.

“He didn’t want to stick around, though,” he says. “Can’t exactly blame him. Probably doesn’t want to be thrown up on again.”

Sam speaks firmly now.

“He said he was going home to change and hovered around until Rap told him to come back. You haven’t scared him off. He seems…sturdy.”

“Sturdy? He’s not a piece of furniture, Sam.”

Amusement lets Dean meet Sam’s eyes, and they’re green almost all the way through, lit with the beginnings of laughter. It looks strange against his skin, which is still drawn and dull. 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you aren’t dating a chair, Dean, don’t worry.”

Dating? Dean coughs, shock kicking him in the lungs. Sam’s expression shifts and he picks up a glass of water from a low table nearby, holding it out to Dean with a worried look.

“How bad do you feel?” he asks, and being more honest about this shit is on their list. 

“Bruised. Sore. Head hurts like a bitch. Nothing feels broken.” In some ways, it hurts worse to say it than to feel it, but at least he gets to see Sam’s expression clear of some of the concern. “I promise, anything changes for the worse and I’ll tell you.”

Anything else is cut off by Rap reappearing, two bowls in hand. She hands one to Sam and points at a chair a few feet away. He retreats, looking at the bowl a little uncertainly. Dean doesn’t blame him. The thing’s orange with black stripes. Rap looks critically at Dean and he has the sudden, humiliating realisation that she’s probably thinking about feeding him. He forces himself to a sitting position, only swaying a bit, and fixes his face so his dizziness doesn’t show. Rap looks unimpressed, but she gives him control of his own bowl and spoon.

“You okay if Harvey comes round?” she asks after watching them each eat a few mouthfuls. 

“It’s your house,” Dean says, inspecting a lump of something in his bowl. It might be a vegetable. He eats it anyway. 

“And you’re my guest,” Rap says. “My guest who’s been out cold in the woods all afternoon. You can say if you’d rather not see him.”

He feels her eyes on him, hers and Sam’s, and shifts. Damn knee’s making it nigh on impossible to get comfortable. 

“Should probably thank him for helping find me,” Dean says after a few moments. 

“Good, because he’ll be here in about fifteen minutes unless I tell him to go back home,” Rap says. “I might not have been able to stop him bringing pudding.”

For some reason, the idea of a guy bringing round dessert makes Dean feels like a spotlight has been turned on him. It’s a relief to find his spoon scraping the bottom of the bowl. It means Rap takes the thing from him and leaves the room, even if just for a few minutes. 

Sam clears his throat.

“You want me to leave you two alone when Harvey gets here?” he asks.

“What do you think we’re going to do? Get down and dirty on the settee?”

The look Sam shoots him says that he’s seen Dean in action enough not to put it past him, but he doesn’t press the point. This tolerance thing is starting to work, it seems. When there’s a knock at the door a few minutes later, Sam sits back in the chair and picks up a magazine from the coffee table. Dean thinks about answering the door, but Rap beats him to it, stalking past the living room doorway and waving him back down. He hasn’t got far, in any case. 

And then Harvey’s there, his dark eyes just as warm as Dean remembers and an almost wary look on his face. He carries a covered dish in his hands.

“Hey,” he says, and Dean isn’t sure if the guy’s even noticed Sam’s in the room. Sam’s a pretty big thing to miss. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better now I’m not on a forest floor,” Dean says, quirking his lips up at one side. 

He leans back and lets the cushions take his weight. Harvey hesitates for a moment, his gaze flicking sideways. Ah, he has noticed Sam. It only take a few seconds for Harvey to turn and hand the dish to Rap, who takes it with a wry smile, and then settle himself carefully on the settee next to Dean. He keeps his hands to himself, but Dean sees his fingers twitch where they rest on his thigh.

“Does it happen a lot?” Harvey asks. “Because I didn’t take you for the sort to sleep on a pile of leaves.”

Sam snorts and Harvey raises an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, he’s been known to sleep anywhere,” Sam says from behind the magazine. 

Harvey frowns. Dean hopes he isn’t taking that as a dig at him, somehow. 

“You’ve met my brother, right?” he asks, and Harvey relaxes. 

“Yeah. Your family got the good genes, didn’t it?”

Dean can’t help himself. There’s something to the ebb and flow of conversation with Harvey that just pulls it out of him.

“Your lot didn’t do so badly,” he says. 

It’s worth it to see Harvey’s smile reach his eyes, but Dean is more aware of Sam being around than he normally is when he flirts. Screw it. Sam’s as good as said he knows and is okay with it, as far as Dean can make out. He feels his own smile warm.

When he looks away, he catches Sam smiling, the sort of soft, affectionate expression that his brother’s turned on Cas sometimes. Thinking of Cas is… He grabs at the fact his brother’s happy for him and clings to it. 

“Who wants pudding?” Rap asks brightly.

Dean looks round to see her standing with the bowl, a slightly fixed look on her face. Ah. Yeah. So, they’ve been letting her stand there and ignoring her. 

“I will,” Sam says. “What is it, anyway?”

“Honey and ginger sponge,” Harvey says, but he’s still looking at Dean. He winks. “Sweet and hot.”

The noise Sam makes is almost worth the embarrassment of hearing that said, and Dean can’t stifle the grin that grows as he ducks his head. 

“I’ll…get everyone a slice,” Rap says, in a tone that suggests she feels she’s heard too much. 

Sam follows her, apparently having reached his limit, and Dean finds himself closer to Harvey than he meant to be, both of them slumping a little sideways on the settee until their shoulders almost touch. Harvey lowers his voice.

“You really okay?” he asks. When Dean nods, Harvey lifts his hand and touches his fingertips to the outside of Dean’s thigh, skimming up the denim and down in small strokes. It’s idle, almost meaningless, but Dean can’t focus on anything else. “You had me worried,” Harvey says. “I know we only just met, but I’ve got to say, my bed’s going to be a lot less fun tonight if you aren’t in it.”

“Yeah?” Dean breathes the word more than says it. He can’t take his eyes from Harvey’s hand. He’s having flashes back to what that hand can do. “You, er… You got a solution?”

“Might have.” Harvey shifts, twisting his body so his mouth is closer to Dean’s ear. “I’ve got this theory. Everything looks better in the right setting. You find a work of art, you make sure to display it properly.”

Dean’s heart is beating harder, a pulsing thud, and maybe Sam was right.

“You’ve got a point,” Dean says. It occurs to him that he’s the work of art, and it’s more important than ever that he keeps watching Harvey’s hand, because he can’t look up at the guy when he’s just said something like that.

Harvey’s lips are against the shell of Dean’s ear. Dean hears footsteps in the hallway.

“Spend the night with me? I’ll take care of you.”

Dean meets his eyes as he pulls back, taking his hand with him, and the stubble, the long strands of dark hair, the way Harvey’s looking at him, steal his answer from him. He nods.


	11. Chapter 11

Sam won’t let Dean walk. 

“No. You were face down in the dirt a few hours ago. No way are you marching across town right now.”

“I was planning more of a swagger,” Dean says, but Sam’s face is fixed. Dean shrugs, the movement shifting the cushions of the settee so that Harvey sways against him. “Fine. So I’ll drive.”

“And you think you’re up to driving?” Sam asks.

“What else do you suggest?” Dean asks, irritation spiking. “What, are you gonna drive me over? Planning on picking me up in the morning, too? Asking if I had a nice play-date?

“I’ll sure you’ll have a wonderful play-date, Dean-”

“Bet on it,” Harvey says, just loud enough for Sam to hear. It’s good to have proof that Sam can pull those disapproving faces at people other than Dean. “And I can drive if Dean isn’t up to it. I mean, if you’re okay with me handling your car?”

Dean just manages to bite back a comment about what Harvey is welcome to handle, and he shakes his head instead.

“No. I’ve driven in worse state than this. No offense, man, but driving my baby is one thing I can always do.”

Sam doesn’t look convinced, which is crap, because he’s seen Dean drive when any normal man would have been laid up in hospital, but Harvey walks next to him as they make their way outside, and slips into the passenger seat with a look of admiration on his face.

“Almost as much of a beauty as you,” he says, as though anyone says that kind of thing. 

Dean coughs and turns the key. 

At Harvey’s place, the Impala gets the use of the garage, Harvey making a comment about taking care of all the precious things. He says it while he runs a hand up and down Dean’s back. Dean leans against the side of his car, his hands braced against her body, and lets his head dip forwards as Harvey strokes along his spine. 

It’s a while before they make it into the house properly.

Once inside, Harvey insists on taking Dean straight to the bedroom. He strips him slowly, kissing each stretch of skin as it’s revealed and murmuring praise. The aches and pains from whatever happened out in those woods still throb in his skin, in his bones, but now Harvey’s soft touches and trailing kisses hum alongside, making them easier to bear. 

Dean bites his lip as Harvey undoes the buttons of Dean’s jeans, sinking to his knees to kiss Dean’s hip, the fold between his thigh and his groin. The slide of the denim over his legs takes too long, but he makes himself wait. Harvey has promised to take care of him. 

He’s naked by the time Harvey runs his hands over the backs of Dean’s legs, curving his palms around Dean’s ass. It feels like a suspended moment of time, and then Harvey leans in and touches his lips to the head of Dean’s cock, opening his mouth slowly as he shifts his gaze up to meet Dean’s eyes. Dean gasps at the affection, the soft reverence, as much as at the sensation of warmth and wetness, at the flick of the tongue. 

Harvey moves on far too soon, rising and kissing his way up Dean’s stomach, up his chest, up his throat. When his mouth reaches Dean’s, the kiss warms him right through.

“Bed?” Harvey says against Dean’s skin. 

One of his hands is still on Dean’s ass, the other has made its way up his back, a firm glide to his shoulders. It anchors him. Dean nods. 

Safe on the bed, he runs a hand through Harvey’s hair, feeling the strands slip between his fingers. It’s not the same… Well, he doesn’t know if it’s the same. He never got the chance to try. Not really. Not like this. He sets aside the flash of guilt, the wash of shame, and focuses on the man above him now. This man is here and this man spills praise onto his skin. 

This man also shifts in a way that has Dean gasping. 

Minutes pass before Harvey pushes himself up on his elbow, running his hand over Dean’s head and down the side of his face. Harvey’s cheeks are flushed and his lips are curved into a languorous smile.

“We can leave it at this,” he says, but the offer is clear in his eyes. 

Dean shakes his head, pressing his cheek into Harvey’s palm. 

“No. No, I want…” He isn’t used to saying what he wants. Not when it comes to something caring, something that might even be real. “I want more. I want you.”

“You’ve got me,” Harvey says. He blinks and for a moment Dean sees almost as much confusion, as much tentative hope on Harvey’s face as Dean’s been feeling. “I mean, not to rush things, but…”

“You’ve fucked me, dude,” Dean says. “Pretty sure we’ve already done the rushing.”

“Tell me you want me to do it again,” Harvey says. “But only if you mean it.”

Dean pulls in a breath as Harvey moves, rolling his hips once more. It’s an offer, though, not a demand. Not a coercion. Dean’s almost unsure how to respond. Finally, he nods, and Harvey grins. 

“Thank God,” he says, and presses his mouth to Dean’s again.

This time, Dean rolls onto his stomach, pulling a pillow under his chest and hugging it to him as Harvey settles behind him, stroking along Dean’s back from his shoulder blades to the curve of his spine just above his ass.

“I can’t see a mark on you,” Harvey says. “You’ll let me know if anything hurts?”

Dean grunts, way past wanting to form more words, and stretches, feeling the pull of his own muscles right down through his legs. He hears Harvey laugh, a low, rippling sound. 

“Okay. Okay, I get the message. We’ve got to work on your patience.”

This time, it seems to take far longer for Harvey to work his fingers into Dean, until Dean’s gasping and fighting to stay still. Whenever he moves too much, Harvey uses his free hand to press down on Dean’s back, just enough to remind him Harvey is there, that Harvey is taking care of things. That waiting will be rewarded.

Dean sighs when Harvey pulls out his fingers, and Harvey plants a kiss in the dip of Dean’s back, another a few inches up, kissing his way along either side of Dean’s spine until he’s draped over Dean, one of his hands reaching round to fold over one of Dean’s, the other bracing against the mattress. He slides into Dean slowly, whispering admiration into Dean’s ear, and when he starts moving properly Dean gasps again, his lips parting around the sound. The pressure of Harvey in him, the weight of Harvey on top of him, the way the guy’s wrapped himself round Dean and taken hold, add together into safety and sensation and sweet warmth building up and up and up until Dean shudders and comes, biting his lip. 

Harvey thrusts a few more times, a little harder, a little firmer, and follows Dean, his orgasm spasming through his frame in a way Dean can feel all the way up, Harvey going tense and still and burying his face against the back of Dean’s neck. 

They stay that way for a few moments, both breathing heavily. When Harvey pulls back, Dean almost asks him to stay where he is, but it’ll get uncomfortable really quickly. Reluctantly, he feels Harvey slide out of him, feels the sticky warmth of come, and debates the effort of getting cleaned up or just rolling over onto a clean patch of the bed and hoping Harvey will fold himself around Dean again.

Harvey makes the decision for him, tugging him over so he’s on his side with his nose pressed against Harvey’s collarbone. He strokes a hand through Dean’s hair, the other tracing circles on Dean’s back. 

“We’ll get showered in a bit,” Harvey says, “and I’ll make some hot chocolate. Aunt Miriam showed me how to make it. It’s rich and creamy and perfect. But a nap sounds like a really good idea. You okay with that?”

Dean’s eyes are closed and he feels heavy lethargy in every limb, Harvey’s words the only things he can focus on other than how good the bed feels under him, how nice it is to have those hands working patterns against his skin. He manages a noise that might be close to a word. Harvey chuckles and presses a kiss to Dean’s forehead.

“A nap it is, then,” he says. “Then we get clean. I promised I’d take care of you, after all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I claim this as character development or relationship growth or something and say that is why is deserves a chapter? Rather than just it's another attempt at porn? Also, I love the idea of Dean having someone who takes charge in a caring way, but doesn't push it. I hope that's coming across.


	12. Chapter 12

Dean drifts awake to find the room in darkness and a blanket draped over him. When he moves, tightness across patches of his skin tell him he should have got cleaned up earlier. Now, he’ll need a proper shower at the very least. 

The pattering hiss of water tells him where Harvey is, and even with the lack of clean up from before Dean’s too comfortable to get up before he has to. He closes his eyes and lets himself float in near-sleep until the water shuts off and a door opens. Footsteps in the room pull his eyes open to find Harvey smiling at him from partway across the room, a towel around his waist. Dean wants to remove it.

“Hey,” Harvey says. “Looks like we both needed a sleep. You want to shower? It’s about eleven. I was thinking, if you want, you could shower and we could still have that hot chocolate before we settle down properly.”

Dean’s too sleepy to waste much energy on thought if Harvey’s willing to do it for him, so he pushes back the blanket and sits up, noting how Harvey’s eyes track the movement. 

As he pads past Harvey, Dean pauses for a kiss, cupping the back of Harvey’s head. The bruising was invisible before, but now it’s gone, and he has the irrational feeling it’s from sleeping next to this guy. It must all have been in his head, and feeling that connection to another human has healed it. Harvey links his index finger around Dean’s little finger and leans in, deepening the kiss. When Dean pulls back, their hands trail apart and Dean smiles, ducking his head.

“I’ll, er, I’ll go get cleaned up,” he says.

At Harvey’s nod, Dean makes himself leave the guy and heads off to the shower. It’s not normally so hard to leave behind a one night stand, not even one as attractive as Harvey. And the guy is attractive, with that long, dark hair and stubble, with warm brown eyes and a straight nose and a smile which lights up his whole face, and… 

Wow. Dean might need to take a moment to assess what’s going on here, because the last time he felt like this about someone was… Was it even Lisa? He’d loved Lisa, but he’d been in no state to commit, and Lisa was just too decent to throw him out when he was such a mess. It had been no basis for a relationship, though.

Maybe Cassie. He’d loved Cassie. Even told her that. But they hadn’t ever got to the caring stage like this, because Dean hadn’t let them. And he’d never let himself be serious with a man, John’s disapproval hanging over him, despite the fact his dad had never said outright that Dean being into both men and women would be an issue. Hell, John had never directly commented on anything about sexuality at all. With John, it had always seemed that he saw any romance as a distraction, but assumed any hook-up for himself or his boys would be with a woman. John’s shadow is a long one, and hard to shake. 

Dean pauses with the shampoo bottle in his hand and frowns. He hasn’t thought about his father all that much over the last year or two. Not the way he used to, when John’s voice in his head was near constant. He isn’t sure why he’s thinking about his dad now. No. Maybe he’s lying to himself there. John and his presence niggle at the back of Dean’s mind whenever Dean hooks up with a guy, but not like this, as though he half expects to leave the shower and find John in the next room. He shakes his head and forces himself to go back to lathering up the shampoo. 

He’s not going to stand here with the water beating down on him and let his dad distract him, not when a sweet, handsome guy is out there ready to be the focus of Dean’s attention.

Feeling fresher and determined not to let memories of John Winchester ruin his fun, Dean dries off and makes his way back to the bedroom, where he finds that Harvey has left his bag on the bed. Dean pulls on the t-shirt and boxers he intends to sleep in, and adds a pair of cotton pants he got for sleeping in when it was cold. 

He’s rubbing a smaller towel over his hair, no doubt leaving it up in spikes, when he wanders through to the living area and finds Harvey sitting on the settee with two huge mugs on the coffee table in front of him. He’s wearing a set of deep blue pajamas that Dean wants to take right back off him, and he’s sitting with his legs crossed and one arm over the back of the settee, his body twisted slightly so he’s looking at Dean as he comes in.

“You want to watch a film, listen to music, talk?” Harvey asks.

“Er, well, not much with the talking,” Dean says.

“How are you with the listening?” Harvey counters, and there’s an edge to him that makes Dean want to return the favour Harvey’s been doing him. Caring ought to go both ways, after all.

“I can do that,” he says, sinking down onto the other end of the settee and accepting the mug Harvey passes him.

They sit in silence for several minutes, but it’s almost comfortable, just a slight thrum under the atmosphere that keeps Dean from relaxing entirely. It’s not bad, just…there. He’s more awake now, feels like going right back to sleep is off the menu. He might as well listen. He can always kiss the guy to shut him up if he needs to.

Harvey holds his mug in both hands, staring into it, and only flicking a look up at Dean now and then. He seems to be having trouble starting.

“You got something you want to say, man, just spit it out,” Dean says. Some of his old rhythms come back to him now the soft, loving attention has turned to something more hesitant, and he lets one corner of his mouth curve up into a smirk. Or something like one. “I don’t bite. Not unless you ask me to.”

Harvey huffs out a quiet laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He meets Dean’s eyes properly and the sense of connection is far greater than should be possible in just a couple of nights. “You don’t have to tell me, but when did you break up?”

“What?” Dean asks. 

“With your last boyfriend. Girlfriend. Partner.” Harvey shrugs, a tiny movement that pulls Dean’s attention for how different it is from the guy back in the bedroom, with his whispered praise and his soft control and his steadiness. “The way you lean into me, the way you are… I just get the feeling it wasn’t long ago the two of you broke up. I’m not wanting to pry,” he says. “But, for me? It was about five months ago. Might seem like a long time, but we were together for, God, over ten years. I thought that was it for me, you know? And then it all falls to pieces in months.” He shrugs again, and Dean didn’t know so much hurt could be poured into such a small movement of the shoulder. “Said he needed more, needed the old spark. Apparently, he needed it with someone else. So…I just wanted you to know. Me back in the bar? That was me back in my early twenties, having a night out in now-me’s body, and I consider myself very lucky to have run across you. I don’t want to pressure you. You just want to hook up while you’re in town, that’s fine. It’s still an experience I do not want to miss. But…”

Dean finds himself leaning in, as though that will make sure he doesn’t miss anything. 

“But?” he prompts, when Harvey doesn’t go on.

“But I think, even though this is really soon for me, that we could have something here, so I wanted you to know. That he left me. That I was with him for over a decade and I might not be fully over it. So, if you feel the same, and if you feel you can tell me…” 

Harvey trails off again, but there’s no sense he’s waiting for Dean to speak. It’s more as though he’s leaving space so Dean can talk if he wants to.

“We didn’t break up,” Dean says, and his throat tightens, squeezing his words to silence. He takes a breath, clears his throat, tries again. This time, his voice is hushed, like he’s in a church or a funeral home. “We didn’t break up,” he manages. “He…”

He was going to say that Cas and him, they weren’t together, but then why is it Cas he thinks of the moment Harvey asks that question? 

“I’m so sorry,” Harvey says. Dean feels Harvey’s hand slide onto his knee and looks up into eyes as sincere and sorrowful as any he’s seen. “Breaking up’s bad enough. Hell, it’s awful. But…” He narrows his eyes, tilts his head, as though making sure he can see Dean clearly enough to get this right. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”

Dean presses his lips into a thin line. He nods. There’s no point in hiding it from himself anymore. Sam knows about Harvey, his dad’s gone. The only one left who Dean’s doing this for is Dean, and he doesn’t want to lie about it. Not again. 

“Yeah,” he says, barely loud enough to be called a word. “Lost him about six months back.”

That’s all he can get out. Harvey’s warm hand on his leg keeps him steady enough that he doesn’t fracture at the admission, at letting himself claim Cas’ ending as the tragic end of a relationship it was, for all they never got even close to consummating it. He isn’t even sure Cas knew how he felt. He isn’t sure Cas knew how Cas felt.

“I’m so sorry,” Harvey says. 

It’s a useless phrase, hollow and empty and no practical assistance at all, but hearing it banishes a little of the chill inside Dean. 

When Harvey sets down his mug and moves across to press himself up next to Dean, Dean lets himself be folded into a hug, his head resting against Harvey’s shoulder, and the tears he sheds are a catharsis. They are a claiming and a letting go.


	13. Chapter 13

Dean doesn’t rush out of bed the next morning. The sun falls in bars across the bed, that clean, clear quality to the light speaking of promise and hope. It’s the time of day when possibility still lies in each second and Dean intends to see it come to something. 

He has no idea what to do about Harvey. Lovely though it is to feel cared for, and much as he already likes the guy, both of them are trying to heal just now. Dean’s got no expertise in this kind of thing. 

There’s no harm in enjoying whatever this is for a few more days, though. Once Dean and Sam have dealt with whatever it is that’s making demands to the townsfolk, they’ll be out of here. Time enough then to worry about the future.

He lifts one hand into a bar of sunlight, watching as it brushes his skin and feeling the warmth. It’s pleasant. 

The bar falls across Harvey’s stomach, where the sheet has shifted down to reveal the fine trail of hairs starting at his naval. The light burnishes the skin, and Dean lowers his hand until the pads of his fingers touch down. Harvey makes a sleepy noise of pleasure, and Dean’s lips twitch. There’s no harm at all in enjoying this.

He shifts his weight, rising up on his elbow enough that he can lean in and kiss the skin on Harvey’s belly, his kiss turning into a smile pressed to the guy’s body at the way Harvey twitches and sighs. He kisses his way down Harvey’s body, his hand leading the way, until he has to nudge the sheet away with the side of his hand.

And freezes.

Turning his head, he rests his cheek on Harvey’s warm flesh and frowns.

“What is it?” Harvey asks, his voice thick with sleep. “Why’ve you stopped?”

“Didn’t know you had a tattoo,” Dean says.

There’s a pause. It’s a crowded, heavy moment, even without anyone moving or speaking, but Dean feels Harvey tense under him.

“What?” Harvey asks at last.

“Tattoo,” Dean says. He unfreezes enough to move, stroking his fingers down over the pale ink, over the rectangle of shapes and sigils. Because even from this angle, it’s clear there are sigils. “Right here.”

Another thick moment of silence. Another tensing of muscles. 

“I don’t,” Harvey says. 

Dean traces the curving line of one shape, something itching at his memory.

“Don’t know what to tell you,” Dean says. “I’m touching it right now.”

He has to move as Harvey sits up and peers down his own body. 

“Shit,” he says. “That…I don’t remember getting that. I don’t remember having that.”

A familiar sense of the world destabilising around him leaves Dean outwardly calm. He knew this was too good to be true. He gestures for Harvey to settle back against the headboard and moves around until he can see the markings properly. 

“Those are definitely some sort of sigils, man,” he says. He thinks some of them look familiar, but Sam’s better at this sort of thing. “You, uh, you know anything about those?”

“Aunt Miriam showed me some of her books,” Harvey says, sounding grim, “but like I say, I really don’t remember deciding to get any inked onto my skin. That whole giant-voice-made-of-stars thing was more than enough weird for me.”

“Your Aunt Miriam know a lot about this, then?” Dean asks. One of the sigils looks like someone smashed some triangles together and stuck some extra lines at the bottom. It’s far too familiar, but he can’t quite place it.

He looks up to see Harvey frowning.

“What?” Dean asks.

“You know my Aunt Miriam,” he says. “You were just at her house. She got into hunting after one of her friends was killed by that Darkness thing.”

Dean finds himself staring at Harvey, his mind free-wheeling in a kind of grey blankness. 

“That’s why you’re in town asking about that presence, right? You’ve come to help her? Wait, you don’t think this could be connected?”

“I…You know I’m a hunter?” Dean asks, because that’s what his brain’s got stuck on. “And Rap’s your Aunt?”

Harvey rolls out of bed and scrabbled in his bedside cabinet, coming back with a phone and tapping at the screen until he has a photo up. He turns the screen to Dean.

“Look. This is from the evening I saw that thing. From earlier on, when we were just messing around in the park, before I went to the gym. Look. Blank skin.”

Dean takes the phone and finds himself looking at a shirtless Harvey, a ball held in both hands above his head and a grin plastered on his face. The patch of skin where he had a tattoo now is clear.

“Just means you didn’t have one then,” Dean says. “You really haven’t noticed it before?”

“No.” Harvey climbs back on to the bed, sitting back on his heels and not seeming to care at all that was naked. “And you haven’t noticed it, either, have you?”

Dean hasn’t, but he’s more been the focus in their interactions so far. He can’t really remember looking.

“What we’re saying is, you got a visitation from some stars that wanted to see me, and then you’ve grown a tattoo,” Dean says. It’s important to get things clear, especially when a tiny bit of stability has just been sent rocking. 

“Wanted to see you?” Harvey sounds confused. 

“Yeah. Ra- Your Aunt Miriam showed me what the thing’s been shouting at people. It wants me brought to it. You said it spoke to you.”

“It did. But it didn’t say to bring you.” Harvey colours, his lips pulling into the sort of smile Dean recognises from when he’s felt on the spot himself. “It, er, it told me to keep my eyes open. Said I had something good coming my way, that I should cherish it.”

“Cherish?” Dean feels his eyebrows rise.

“Uh. Yeah. It used that exact word, as near as I can say it used words. Like I said…”

“Pressed into your mind, yeah.”

They sit without speaking for a bit, Dean processing what he’s just learned and trying to work out how these new pieces of the puzzle fit together. He keeps coming back to a couple of points.

“You knew I was a hunter. Why didn’t you say?”

Harvey slumps sideways, pulling one of the pillows under his head and looking up at Dean. 

“At first I didn’t. Just thought you were the best thing I’d laid eyes on in ages. Then, when you asked about the presence, I figured you must be a hunter. It wasn’t a big deal. I only wanted the experience, like I said. Only…turns out you’re an experience a man should have as many times as possible.” He presses on, either ignoring or not registering Dean’s expression at that. “And when Aunt Miriam rang and said you were missing, it wasn’t exactly the time to worry about it. I kind of thought she’d have said who I was, that I know she hunts. I don’t hunt. Just to make that clear. I don’t know much about it, except it’s a thing that happens.”

“And you know what kinds of thing we hunt?” Dean asks. 

Harvey nods, his hair feathering out on the pillow, dark against the slate grey cotton.

“Some of them. She said, when we were out looking for you, that you and your brother are pretty big names in the community. That true?”

Dean grimaces and looks away.

“Yeah.” Not for all the right reasons. “And this voice told you to cherish the good thing you had coming? And you think…you think that’s…?” He can’t say it. 

“You.” Harvey can. He sounds certain. 

“So, either a creature that leaves some of your fellow townsfolk beaten and broken took a few minutes out to care about your love life, or there’s more than one creature.”

And Dean’s getting that feeling of certainty that leads him to make decisions Sam thinks come out of nowhere. It’s the kind of gut instinct that’s seen him right for most of his life, right up until the last few years. Now, he’s never sure when to trust it. 

He makes himself turn back to Harvey and is struck again at the dark hair, at the good looks, at the sense of trust and warmth.

“Think back,” he says. “Did you see any tentacles?”


	14. Chapter 14

Harvey refuses to let Sam inspect the tattoo, but he does agree that Dean can take a photograph. They head over to Rap’s place as soon as they’re both dressed, that sense of energy Dean felt the night before driving them into action.

Rap asks if they had a nice night and Dean shifts on his feet. Harvey smiles and hugs her.

“The best,” he says. “You got any coffee on?”

Sam joins them at the table, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and no matter what else is going on Dean has to be grateful that Sam looks more rested. He’s less grateful that Sam raises an eyebrow at him when Harvey sits next to him and casually rests a hand on the back of Dean’s chair. After a brief pause, Dean meets Sam’s eyes and smirks. He doesn’t let himself worry about whether it reaches his eyes. 

“So, there’ll be a reason the two of you dragged yourselves out of bed so early,” Rap says, apparently not at all bothered by alluding to her own nephew’s sex life. “Spill.”

Sharing the truth about Harvey’s experience doesn’t take long, but Sam makes him go over it two more times after Dean shows Sam the photo on his phone. Sam stares at it, biting his lip, as Harvey recounts what he saw, what he heard, again. He flicks his gaze to Dean once Harvey’s done.

“And you think this one’s Cas?” he asks. His eyes are shot through with grey. 

“Yeah. I mean… Hell, Sam, you know what Cas can be like, with all that sincere crap.”

“What’s Cas?” Harvey asks, his fingers brushing the back of Dean’s neck.

Sam watches Dean, but Dean can’t get any more words out. He just mourned Cas, last night, just let himself cry for the loss. And now this? He can feel a fine thread of anger, the old stuff he thought he was done with, winding through him, grief piled on top of that. Hope’s in there, too, finer and thinner than the rest. Most of all, he feels numb. Despite that, he leans back into Harvey’s touch.

Apparently taking pity on him, Sam speaks up, his tone careful. 

“Cas was an angel. An archangel, actually. And…he was our friend.”

“Angels?” Harvey shares a look with Rap. “Those are a thing? Like, for real, a thing? And you’re friends with one?”

“Were,” Sam corrects, but he darts a look at Dean as he says it, as though checking. “At least, we lost him.”

Dean tenses, but it’s not like he wants to keep this from Harvey. Not really. Harvey strokes his index finger up into the short hairs at the base of Dean’s skull.

“When?” Harvey asks. He sounds casual. Interested. 

“About six months ago,” Sam says. 

Harvey stops stroking. 

“Six months?” he asks. “That’s…recent. I’m sorry to hear you lost him.” He sounds genuine in that, but his hand is still against Dean’s neck. “How did it happen?”

“The Darkness got him,” Dean says, before he can stop himself. He closes his eyes for a moment. All the talks Sam and Dean have had, all the times they so nearly got themselves unsnarled, untangled from the lies and deception and masks…he has to do better here. “No. No, he gave himself up to stop the Darkness. He saved us. All of us. But it cost him…I don’t know. We weren’t there. I wasn’t there.”

“Dean,” Sam says, and his voice is tight with some emotion.

Dean doesn’t let himself be stopped.

“I wasn’t there, because we were running to save ourselves, and when we went back, he was gone. Just a great, gaping hole in the earth. No Cas.”

He feels his voice break over the name, lets it. 

A few moments pass in weighted silence, and Harvey strokes up the back of Dean’s neck again, taking some tension away that Dean hadn’t fully realised was there.

“If it’s him I saw, heard, then he’s not gone, is he?” Harvey asks, his voice gentle. “So, what makes you think it was him? And why’d you ask about tentacles? Do all angels have those?”

Sam takes over again, the crease on his forehead showing he’s noticed how this is affecting Dean.

“As far as we know, just Cas. Most angels just look human once they take a vessel. Cas was…is…Cas had always been different. The last few days, he had tentacle, wings…” Sam trails off and shrugs. “The way you describe those stars? Sounds like Cas’ eyes.”

“There were hundreds of them,” Harvey says.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “And, he always looked out for Dean, so…”

“Your ex-boyfriend’s an angel,” Harvey says, “and he might have told me to look out for you. Huh.”

Sam starts at ‘ex-boyfriend’, but he doesn’t argue it. Looks like Sam’s known a lot more than Dean thought, all along. 

“That’s great,” Rap says. “But the real question is, if this Cas of yours is hanging around here, why hasn’t he come to see you himself? You didn’t see him out in the woods, did you?”

Dean can’t remember what happened out in the woods, but he can’t imagine Cas leaving him out cold on the ground. Under it, once. But never just on it. 

“And what else is out there,” Sam adds. He taps the phone screen. “This tattoo, you say you didn’t notice it before this morning?”

“Why?” Dean asks. “You recognise it?”

“Part of it,” Sam says, and his voice is grim. “Dean, this central sigil? You really don’t know this?”

Dean shakes his head. 

“The triangles? Should I?”

Sam sighs, shaking his head.

“Yeah, Dean. It’s carved into your ribs, so yeah.”

“There’s a whole load of angelic gibberish carved into my ribs, Sam,” Dean counters. “Into yours, too. Like I memorised what they all mean. What, is this some sort of hiding-from-angels thing? Wait.” Dean sits up straight, inadvertently pulling away from Harvey. “Didn’t Cas have some sort of tattoo to keep angels from finding him?”

“Why would an angel need-” Harvey starts.

Sam speaks over him.

“Yeah, he did, but I never got a proper look at it. Did you?” 

Dean shakes his head, admitting to himself that the regret at that admission is for more than one reason. Letting himself think and feel these things is getting a lot easier. 

“Okay,” Sam says. “Well, I’ll need to go and look a lot of these up, but this one, I know. And I really hope it doesn’t mean anything literal.”

No-one asks him to go on, but Dean isn’t the only one staring at his brother, and Sam grimaces.

“This sigil? It’s Lucifer’s.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Lucifer.” Dean’s not able to get out more than that one word. His whole mind is slate grey.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“When are we going to see the end of that bastard?” Dean asks. 

He feels Harvey move, catches his expression out of the corner of his eye, and, yeah, this must be weird to someone who hasn’t been dealing with it all this time. Harvey might know about hunters, but it’s not like Rap’s been at this long herself and Harvey flat out said he wasn’t really involved. Small chance he really knows much about what Sam and Dean have been up to.

Dean turns to Harvey and takes hold of his hand. 

“Sam and me, we’ve been neck deep in shit for years, man. Lucifer, as in the actual devil, once rode Sam like a carnival ride, and the Archangel Michael was set on doing the same with me. Hell, there’s weirder than that. You want out, now’s the time to say. You don’t have to stick with me just because Cas said so.”

Harvey’s eyes widen, then soften.

“You think that’s the only reason…? Dean, I haven’t felt as alive in years as I have these last few days. This whole thing sounds… Well. I don’t really know know what it sounds like. But I’m staying right here. With you. You get that?”

Dean thinks he’s growing as a person. He must be. No way he could have sat through that a few years back, even with his cheeks prickling with embarrassment at Sam having heard it. 

“Er. Yeah. Sure. I get it.” He shifts and glances at Sam, who’s staring at the phone. Right. “Look, this shit is deep, man. If this is Cas, he won’t want you getting hurt. He knows I can take care of myself.”

Harvey huffs out a quiet laugh.

“You mean, in a fight? Because I don’t think that’s the kind of being taken care of he had in mind. And I’m not even supposed to take care of you, remember? I’m supposed to cherish you. I’m pretty sure that’s harder to do for yourself.”

This time, Sam doesn’t hide the fact he can still hear across a distance of a few feet, and Dean looks round to see his brother’s startled expression. But screw it. Getting past a lot of the crap their dad pushed into both their heads is a huge chunk of what they’ve been working on. This whole idea of actually letting himself feel worthwhile? Not lacking? It’s tough, but Dean’s seen enough glimpses this last couple of days to want to work on it.

“Okay, then,” he manages, because he can’t just leave Harvey hanging. He coughs and turns back to Sam. He leaves his hand where it is. “You got anything other than the name of Cas’ most dick brother?”

“No. Nothing solid. I need some books I saw at the bunker.” Sam sounds irritated, perhaps at himself, perhaps at the fact that books don’t travel with him by magic. “They’re rare. I doubt they’ll be lying around in a town library.”

“What are you saying? That you need to head back to the bunker?”

Dean doesn’t like the thought of Sam going off and leaving. It’s an old feeling. He squashes it.

“Maybe,” Sam says. “I’ll see if I can find anything local first, but yeah. Might need to.”

“What kind of book do you need?” Rap asks. “I’ve a friend who helps out with research sometimes. She has a stack of books. I’ll take you over there, Sam. Actually, Harvey should come, too. In case she needs to see the tattoo properly.”

Harvey looks like he’s just been told he’ll be trekking naked through the town square with only one feather for strategic placement of his choice, and Dean has got to stop letting images like that into his mind. Harvey could probably pull that off, and feathers have a range of interesting uses. 

“You want me to what, now?” Harvey asks. “I was going to stay here and keep an eye on Dean.”

“Keep an eye?” Dean glances from Sam, to Rap, to Harvey, and not a one of them looks like anything ridiculous has been said. “Am I six, now? I can be by myself without burning down the house or eating glue. Any anyway, I was going to head back out to where you heard Cas, see if I can get through to him.”

“Yeah, maybe you should wait on that, Dean,” Sam says. 

“Wait? Sam, it’s been six months already, and it’s not like he was taking my calls before that.” Which is unfair, Dean knows it’s unfair, because Dean hadn’t exactly been ringing. Still, the knowledge that Cas and Sam phoned each other more during those months than they did him still has the power to itch at him. “How long do I have to wait before I can speak to the guy? There some magical time limit I need to know about?”

“There might be,” Sam says seriously. “The point is we know hardly anything about this except Harvey has Lucifer’s sigil on his skin. And yesterday you were out at that spot and we found you out cold. You’d been there for hours. Going out there alone again… I don’t like it.”

Going it alone. Right. Something else they’ve talked about. Thing is, Dean isn’t planning on going it alone. He’s planning on going and finding Cas, and then he won’t be alone. 

He’s aware of the warmth from Harvey’s hand and it feels like a brand, just for a moment, a sign of betrayal. Only, Cas told Harvey to…keep an eye on Dean. It’s not betraying Cas when Cas has said for it to happen, right? Besides, Cas and Dean? Whatever they have between them has never been exactly made clear. 

Stuffing all of those confused feelings back deep inside for later, Dean pulls a face at Sam.

“Fine. We’ll do it your way. What do you say, Harvey? You up for a family day out to look at some books?”

“And let one of Aunt Miriam’s friends peer at my naked body,” Harvey says mournfully.

“I wasn’t going to make you strip right down, you daft lump,” Rap says. “You can preserve that delicate modesty. I thought this thing was on your stomach? I’m pretty sure you can avoid waving anything provocative in her face. But to be on the safe side, don’t go waggling yourself around too much.”

Rap pushes back her chair and stands, clearly ignoring the way Harvey’s just choked on nothing. Dean squeezes his hand and pulls him to his feet. If they’re all going to gang up and treat Dean like a delicate little flower, then Harvey can put up with a bit of teasing. Still, he finds time to press a kiss to Harvey’s lips before they make it out to the car. 

Rap sits in the front, insisting she needs to see the road properly to give directions. Sam ends up squashed in the back, darting glances at Harvey every now and then. Apparently, knowing Dean’s been getting down and dirty with a guy is something Sam can take in his stride, but hearing that guy say something sappy has Sam looking ready to hide. 

It doesn’t take long to make it across town to a leafy street lined with houses that look like someone sat and look real hard at olde-world England and then tried to recreate it with added satellite dishes. 

Rolling her eyes at the look on Dean’s face, Rap gathers the handles of her huge, apparently made by skinning a Muppet, bag and slides out of the car.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s go have my friend leer at Harvey.”

“I’m your nephew!” Harvey calls, but Rap is already out of the car. Harvey turns to catch Dean’s eye in the mirror. “Does that not strike you as a bit weird? I mean, is it normal behaviour for an aunt.”

“I, eh, wouldn’t know,” Dean says. 

Harvey grumbles along just behind Dean as they make their way to the house after Rap, who is already knocking on the door. Sam is all serious focus now, but he still won’t look directly at Harvey. It’s perhaps just going to take some time for Sam to shift from intellectual acceptance and support to being used to witnessing Dean being around someone so open and caring as Harvey is. 

The thought occurs to Dean that he’s thinking longer term than a few days, and the confusion of that keeps him occupied as a wavering outline appears behind the stained glass panels of the door. It shifts and grows, copper-red emerging from the rippling image just before the door is pulled open.

“Hey,” Rap says. “I was hoping in all those books and so on you’ve got, you might have one on angel tattoos.”

“I can probably help you out,” the woman says. She turns her head, catches sight of Sam and Dean. She already so pale, so waif-like, her eyes are so huge, that Dean wasn’t sure she could reveal shock. She manages. “Hi,” she says, her voice fading to a wisp. 

The silence stretches long enough that Harvey reaches over and touches the side of his hand to Dean’s, probably hoping to prompt a response. Rap’s frowning, looking between them. Sam has drawn himself up as though expecting a blow. Dean blinks, but she’s still there. He has to reply before this gets any more awkward.

“Hello, Anna.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ExpatGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl) and I are exchanging ghost stories for Christmas, reviving a fine old Christmas tradition. They will be Destiel reworkings of ghost stories which will post on Christmas Eve. We'd love to have some other people join in. Any takers?
> 
> If so, it's Destiel, a ghost story based on a classic ghost tale/novel and it's a minimum of 3,000 words (but can go over if you want, of course)
> 
> My email is humanformdragon@gmail.com if anyone is interested. And then I can work out how stuff works on here if/when it becomes relevant. (I'm also humanformdragon [humanformdragon](http://humanformdragon.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if anyone wants to come talk to me there - I also reblog a lot of pictures of dogs and things that amuse me).


	16. Chapter 16

Anna stares at him, her lips slightly parted and her copper hair just as rich and brilliant as Dean remembers it. 

He doesn’t remember the over-sized white cardigan that drapes itself over her thin form, looking like some elegant and massive version of the kind of sweater fishermen wear in films. He has hazy memories of seeing them on real fishermen one time as a kid when their dad took on a case in a fishing town. None of those memories include one shoulder peeking out from the wide neckline.

He is horribly aware that he’s standing next to a guy he’s had sex with twice and in front of a woman he got it on with in the back of his car before she exploded into light and ended up trying to erase his brother. 

Anna seems to be having issues of her own, if the way she’s gripping the edge of the door is anything to go by, but she shakes her head and steps back, swinging the door open wider.

“You’d best come in,” she says. “Rap wouldn’t have brought you here without a reason.”

Darting a look at Sam, Dean steps into the house, feeling like he’s taking a far bigger stride than he is. On one side, he’s in the world where Anna was killed, where Michael in John’s body burned her up. On the other side, he’s in a house where Anna cuts an insubstantial figure as she walks down the dim hallway ahead of him. No. Insubstantial isn’t right. She’s got weight, presence, despite being so small in body. He wonders if she’s come back human. 

She leads them into a room lined with tall shelves of books, trailing plants tumbling from pots among the books themselves and a honeyed light falling across the two settees. Dean sits when she gestures for him to, sensing Harvey settle next to him. Rap and Sam take chairs to either side. Anna herself sinks cross-legged onto the settee facing them, her back straight and her hands clasps in her lap. She locks eyes with Dean again.

“I imagine you have questions,” she says.

“Yeah,” Dean answers. “You could say that.”

Anna tilts her head up, her shock from the doorway largely hidden.

“Tough,” she says, after a moment. “I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why I came back. All I know is I’ve been living here long enough to make some friends, and I don’t want them harmed. Are we going to have a problem?”

Dean moves his leg, nudging Harvey’s thigh, and he isn’t even sure if he’s done it on purpose. Images of Anna fighting his mom, of her coming for his parents to kill Sam, to stop Sam from ever being born, crowd into his mind. They’re followed swiftly by the image of Anna with light bursting from her eyes and mouth and nose, of Anna being burned to a crisp for doing what she thought she had to do to save the world. After dooming so many for saving Sam, over and over, and seeing Sam make the same mistake in return, Dean finds he’s added Anna, all unconsciously, to his list of people he regrets having died. 

“No,” he says. “You and me? No problem. Sammy?”

“No problem with me,” Sam says. “Don’t expect me to turn my back on you, but I get it. I do.”

Anna frowns. She doesn’t move otherwise.

“You have no reason to worry about me coming after you. I’m pragmatic. Always have been. Cas was always the idealist. I took that action to stop a tragedy. It didn’t pan out, but it still seemed like the logical move at the time. And if you’d just come from-” She cuts herself off, blinks. “Well. Cas could tell you about that, too. Where is Cas, anyway?”

Dean swallows. The warmth from Harvey’s thigh and Anna’s ageless eyes are his two points of contact in the world.

“Cas…he…” Harvey’s thigh moves closer and Dean sits up straighter. “Cas gave himself up to stop the Darkness. You know about the Darkness?”

Anna shakes her head, but catches herself and frowns. 

“Wait. No. I remember Gabriel telling me something about it, but it’s hazy. I…” She lifts one hand to her head, grimacing. “Since coming back, I’ve been having… I keep remembering things I’m not sure are real. They aren’t easy to keep hold of.”

“And Gabriel’s one of them?”

“Him talking to me about the Darkness is,” Anna says. “Is this something to do with why you’re here?”

“We’re hoping to get Cas back,” Harvey says.

Dean shoots him a look he knows must be painted with surprise. Over in the chair on the other side of Harvey, Sam looks taken aback. Harvey regards Anna as though he hasn’t just declared himself part of the team in a way Dean is having trouble processing, as though it’s the most normal thing in the world to talk to a resurrected angel about another angel, who just happens to be the love-

Hmm. And Dean needs to focus.

And he realises Harvey doesn’t really know what Anna is.

“You still an angel, or what?” Dean asks, turning back to Anna and not sparing any time for how that will come across. Too many parts of his life are colliding and he needs to see how they fall, quickly, so he can work out how to feel about it all.

Anna frowns, her hand still at her temple. 

“Not…exactly.” She waves her other hand. “I’d have to explain a lot about angels to make it clear to you, so for now just accept that I’m, in a way, half-way between our species. For one thing, I’m stuck in this form.” 

She glances down at herself as though inspecting an outfit, and Dean wonder what it’s really like, to see a human body as a costume, a set of work clothes, and to have to squash yourself down into to. What does Anna really picture when she thinks of herself? What does Cas? 

Anna’s been human, and so has Cas, but Anna was born to it at one point. Cas wasn’t. 

After seeing the sheer size of the form Cas erupted into over that last stretch of time before he vanished, Dean has more trouble than ever getting his mind around what an angel might really be. He doesn’t know, still, if what he saw was part of Cas’ true form.

When Anna looks back up, there’s still a lingering shadow in her eyes. Whatever she sees when she looks at herself, she isn’t entirely happy with it.

“I still have some of my senses,” she says. “I’m not as limited as a human. I see scars in you, Dean. What have I missed?”

In him? Dean’s not sure he wants to know what she means. He can make a pretty good guess all on his own. Still, with Anna’s help, with her angelic memories to call on, they might get somewhere with this a whole lot faster. And sharing information is a skill both Dean and Sam have been working on, difficult though it can seem to them. 

“You got any chocolate cake?” Dean asks. “Because this is going to take a while.”

Her smile at that is tinged with affection, and Dean smiles back. He always felt his relationship with Anna was cut short. Maybe they can have another chance.

It turns out Anna has a whole cake, and she makes coffee to go with it, any serious talk put on hold until they’re all sat back down. Anna does cast a few looks at Harvey, or rather at the touches shared between Harvey and Dean, and at one point raises an eyebrow at Sam, who shrugs. Dean ignores it. He can’t quite ignore it when Anna reaches out and places her hand on his shoulder, her lower lip caught between her teeth, and tips her head to the side. She seems to be considering something, her focus not really on him. When she pats his arm and lets go, he feels weirdly like she’s just given him a message, but he can’t for the life of him work out what.

His mind is drawn from it as soon as they sit back down and she fixes him with her attention. The plate of cake in her hand does nothing to detract from her near-ethereal appearance, and Dean wonders if things would have been different if Anna had been the one to turn up in that barn. He might have found it easier to believe she was an angel.

“Tell me everything, Dean,” she says. 

He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ExpatGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl) and I are exchanging ghost stories for Christmas, reviving a fine old Christmas tradition. They will be Destiel reworkings of ghost stories which will post on Christmas Eve. We'd love to have some other people join in. Any takers?
> 
> If so, it's Destiel, a ghost story based on a classic ghost tale/novel and it's a minimum of 3,000 words (but can go over if you want, of course)
> 
> My email is humanformdragon@gmail.com if anyone is interested.


	17. Chapter 17

When he’s done, with Sam chipping in to clear up places where Dean gets confused or doesn’t know everything, and Harvey and Rap adding in what they know about the most recent situation, Dean’s exhausted. His head is buzzing, the pressure at the base of his skull making him want to remove his head like the monsters do in Labyrinth. If he could just take off his head and leave it in a nice, dark cupboard for a bit, it would all make more sense. 

Sam’s sitting with a frown on his face, his part-eaten cake the apparent subject of his confusion. 

“You okay, there, Sam?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says, but he doesn’t look up. 

“Not mighty convincing, got to say.” Dean’s own cake is almost untouched and he feels Harvey lift the plate from Dean’s thigh, followed by a faint click as it’s set down. Harvey’s on his right, now, and Dean has a clear line of sight to his brother. “I say something to upset you?”

It’s more than possible. Over all those years, it’s been hard to remember what Sam does and doesn’t know, and hearing everything laid out is painful. And surprising. Anna asked a lot of questions about Cas, and Dean isn’t sure if he ever did fully explain everything he was thinking about throwing the guy out of the bunker. Maybe hearing it is bringing up Sam’s guilt. The kid always thinks things are his fault, his cross to bear, when he was just as much a pawn in things as anyone else.

“It’s just…” One of Sam’s hands clenches for a moment, uncurling slowing as though he’s not sure whether to hold on to something. “I thought…” 

This time, when his words trail off, he looks at Harvey, something puzzled in his eyes. 

“Look, it doesn’t matter,” Sam says, his hand flattening, making a chopping motion. He turns to Anna. “You got any more questions?”

“Can I see the tattoo?” Anna asks. 

Dean gets out his phone, but Anna shakes her head.

“No, Dean. I need to see the actual tattoo.” She stands, somehow drawing Dean and Harvey up with her, and looks up at Dean with a slight curl to her lips. “I promise not to steal your man. I’ve never been into stealing people.” There’s a slight edge of regret, of recrimination in her voice.

Again, Dean’s sure he’s missing something.

Harvey sighs. 

“If you really need to,” he says, and pulls up his shirt.

Anna leans down, her hands braced on her thighs, and turns her head to look up at Dean with a glint in her eye.

“One thing about you, Dean. You have very good taste.”

She ignores Harvey’s choked noise of near-protest and Dean’s stammering reply that she has good taste, and he has got to work on his come-backs, and crouches. Her right hand trails up over Harvey’s skin, just skimming the surface of the ink.

“Did Cas have his tattoo in the same place?” she asks.

Dean shrugs.

“No idea. Something like that, I think.”

“You don’t know?” Sam asks. 

“No, Sammy,” Dean says, narrowing his eyes. “I didn’t get the guy to strip down and show me.”

He says it sarcastically, but Sam stares back, nods, as though taking on board some new piece of information that’s needed for his calculations. Whatever he’s mulling over, it doesn’t seem to make him any happier. 

Dean’s attention is drawn back to Anna, who mutters something in a language that isn’t English. It’s liquid and light in sound form, and Dean has no hope of understanding it. 

“What’d you say?” he asks. “You know what that thing is?”

Anna rubs her index finger along one of the sigils and sighs. Harvey, holding his shirt up with one hand, his other hand tucked under the opposite elbow as though he needs the comfort of holding himself close, shudders.

“That feels weird,” he says.

“It will do,” Anna says. “It’s reacting to my Grace.”

“Thought you said you didn’t have any,” Dean says. 

“No, I said I’m partway between our species,” she corrects coolly, patting Harvey’s skin just above his hipbone and rising to her feet. “I have Grace. What concerns me is that Harvey does, too.”

Silence rings through the room. The shock on Harvey’s face is stark. He’s only just learned about Grace as Sam and Dean filled Anna in on everything she’s missed. 

“Come again?” Dean asks.

“Grace,” Anna repeats. “Harvey has some. At least, there’s some in his body.”

“He’s an angel?” Dean asks, grasping at the first thing that comes to mind.

Anna shakes her head and sinks back onto her settee. Dean takes a second before he sits down himself, reaching up a hand to pull Harvey down next to him. The guy’s looking subdued. 

“What do you mean, then?” Dean asks.

“It’s hard to explain,” Anna says. “It’s not a full Grace. Let me try something.”

She closes her hands, settling back and tipping her head so that she seems to be looking up at the ceiling. Her eyes brighten, taking on the edge of a familiar glow, and Dean reaches for Harvey’s hand. Harvey’s fingers lace with his and tighten. 

That sense of pressure at the base of his skull grows, pressing up and out until it pushes into his jaw, down his spine. His knuckles feel almost swollen, Harvey’s fingers caught between them. 

Anna closes her eyes, and the pressure’s gone.

“What was that?” Harvey asks. There’s a tremble in his voice. 

Dean checks on him, noting the strain on his face, the draining of colour from his tanned skin. Harvey, who has rolled with everything so far, has taken too many shocks today.

“Castiel,” Anna says, and Dean’s attention is right back on her. “He’s…here.”

“Cas?” Dean sits forward, his butt only just on the edge of the settee. “He’s here?”

Anna opens her eyes, drops her chin so she’s looking at Dean, and the crease across her brow is troubling. Anna could be so certain, for all she was troubled. At least, the Anna Dean knew before could be. This Anna is more pulled in, but she still has that weight of assurance. Right now, she gives the impression of standing on shifting ground, unsure of her surroundings.

“I feel his Grace,” she says.

“In Harvey? Cas’ Grace is in Harvey?” Sam asks, when Dean doesn’t. 

Anna presses her lips together, her gaze turning to Harvey and settling there. She stares at him, through him. 

“No. Not…exactly.” Pressing her hand to her head again, she grimaces. “His Grace is everywhere, in everything. I’ve never felt anything like it. But it’s…” She brings her hands together, pushes them out as though they’re skimming over the surface of a wave. “It’s like the ocean. It rises and falls. When I focus, I feel its currents. And it’s stronger in Harvey. And in you, Dean.”

Dean sits. It’s all he can manage. 

“But, the Grace isn’t Cas, right?” Sam asks. “I mean, the Grace is his angel-power. Not him. Harvey isn’t Cas.” 

Sam sounds like he needs Anna to agree with him. 

“No, of course not,” Anna says. “It’s more… Think of a tide, of the sea washing up on a beach. Water collects in rock pools, sometimes. It isn’t the ocean. It’s just…a place the ocean was. It… I can’t explain it.”

“Harvey’s a rock pool?” Dean asks, finally getting his words to unstick from the back of his throat. “I’m a rock pool? You’re telling me we have little pools of Cas in us? Tell me there aren’t angel-crabs in them.”

He doesn’t need to catch sight of Sam’s expression to know that his comment was crass. Everything seems distant, like he’s viewing his own life through a lens, and he isn’t properly connected to what’s happening. 

“I’m pretty sure I haven’t got angel-crabs scuttling about in me,” Harvey says. Mutters, really. The warmth in his voice is subdued.

“Of course you haven’t,” Rap says, speaking up for the first time in ages. “And you say we’ve all got some of this Grace in us?”

“Not just us,” Anna says. “Everything. Every person and plant and rock and everything else.”

“My car has Cas’ Grace in her?” Dean asks. He still feels he’s not touching the ground. That ocean Anna mentioned has swept him up, rising around him until he’s risen with it, his feet leaving the earth, even though when he glances down he can see his boots planted firmly on the heavily patterned rug on Anna’s floor. 

“Yes, Dean,” Anna says, and she narrows her eyes, seeming to catch sight of something as she looks at him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m just perfect,” Dean says. His lips stretch into a grin he doesn’t feel. “Cas is swirling around in everything, even my boots, right? Right. And my socks and my jeans, and my-” He cuts himself off, the natural progression up his body reaching dangerous territory far too quickly. “And me and the guy I have a thing going on with? We’re rock pools. I’m sitting in a dead angel’s house with my sort-of dead best friend sloshing about inside all of us, with my…” He stumbles, even in his current state, when it comes to naming what Harvey is to him. “Being a rock-pool full of Cas. What’s there to be less than peachy about?”

“It’s not exactly Castiel,” Anna says again. She looks worried. Dean can’t see what about. It’s not like she’s the one being a rock-pool. “It’s his Grace, yes. From what you’ve told me, from what I can work out, some of his consciousness should be in everything, too. But it’s not.”

“What?” Sam asks. 

“Are you saying Cas is missing?” Rap asks. “Dead?”

“I don’t know,” Anna says. “I’m saying I can sense his Grace, now that I know to look for it, but I can’t get any sense of him.”


	18. Chapter 18

Rap stands, pushing herself out of her chair and clapping her hands together.

“Let’s keep a clear head on our shoulders, all right?” she says. “Harvey heard Cas only a few weeks ago, so he has to have been around then. How certain are we that he’s actually tied to the Earth? Maybe only his Grace is. Anna, you came back. Couldn’t Cas have done the same?”

“He has. Lots of times,” Sam says. “But this time he isn’t dead. He isn’t. He…fused with the Darkness and then with the Earth, to lock it all in and keep us safe. He went with it, but he didn’t die.” 

Sam sounds fierce enough that Dean knows his brother has been wrestling with this ever since, even though it’s not one of the many things they’ve talked about. It should have been, he realises now. They should have talked more about Cas.

Anna flashes a look at Sam, ancient and vast in a way Dean keeps forgetting she is.

“You could be right,” she says. “But I have to tell you, Castiel doesn’t have to have been present for Harvey to hear him. Not really. Grace isn’t exactly an angel’s self, but it does carry it. And self can imprint on it even once the angel is gone, if the Grace remains.”

“Wait, you’re saying Harvey might have, what, hallucinated Cas because of having a pool of his Grace sloshing around inside him?” Dean asks, and he doesn’t even try to stamp out the note of anger that flares up. “How does that work? Cas told him to watch out for me. Before I got here.” 

He can’t quite bring himself to use the word Harvey used. Cas used. It was Cas. Had to be.

“I’m not saying Cas is gone, Dean,” Anna says, but she looks sorrowful, those huge eyes of hers carrying some light that’s too close to pity. “I’m saying Harvey’s encounter isn’t proof enough on its own that he’s still…distinct.”

“Distinct?” Sam asks. “From what?”

Anna shrugs. 

“From the Earth, perhaps. You have to understand, an angel is… We’re light and we’re energy and we’re not made to be bound in flesh. When I fell, I did it because I was curious. I wanted to know what it was like. Now, I know an angel who has never taken a vessel can’t hope to understand what it is to be human. No. Just taking a vessel isn’t enough. I’ve been as close to human as any angel can get, and I can feel the difference between that and what I have now. I didn’t know I was an angel. Now, I can’t forget it.”

“Yeah, but you ripped your Grace out. You were reborn,” Sam says. “Cas went with his Grace.”

“That’s…It’s…” Anna pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around them, resting her chin on her knees. “It’s not as simple as that, Sam. I put my Grace away and it bonded with a tree. And you know what? I remember being Anna the human, but I also remember being that tree. I remember the way my roots dug down into the dirt and the way my leaves sought the sun. Angel’s aren’t humans who have powers and wings. We’re nothing like you. We’re as much like a lion or a wolf or a rock as we are like you.”

“You’re seriously saying that Cas might have bonded with the Earth so much he doesn’t remember who he is?” Dean asks. “But, look, that would still mean he’s there, right?”

“Yes,” Anna says, frustration clear in her voice. “I don’t understand what’s happened. His Grace is still there, and it feels like it still contains his imprint, but the central spark, the bit that means we can lose our Grace and still exist? I can’t sense that. Not anywhere. And before you ask, Dean, no, I can’t sense that in you or in Harvey, either.”

“So, are you saying he’s part of the Earth or not?” Dean just wants an answer. He just wants Cas back. He just wants to take Harvey and go back to bed and not leave again for days. “I have no idea what you’re trying to say to me.”

“I’m saying I don’t know,” Anna says. “Cas’ spark, his central self, is not here. It’s not in you, or the ground beneath my house, or the wallpaper. His Grace is. The only thing I can think is that his mind, for want of a better word, has become part of its new vessel to the point he’s pulled away from his Grace.”

“Vessel?” Sam asks. “You mean the actual Earth, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Anna says. “But sinking down far enough to reach him if that’s the case? That will take a while, if he’s pulled right in, and I don’t get any sense of him at all from the ground below us, which seems strange.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean stands, pulling Harvey up with him. “You’re just going to have to dig deep. You got anything else for us on the tattoo? How it got there?”

“Resonance, the best I can make out,” Anna says. “It’s a warding tattoo. It should keep fully powered angels away. Lucifer especially. I don’t know why Cas would have included that in his tattoo, but I suppose Lucifer could stand for any angel out to harm him. The Lightbringer was the first one to turn on his fellows. Symbolism is a large part of our language and its spells.”

“Resonance would be the Grace in Harvey adding the tattoo to him because Cas had one?” Rap asks. She’s still standing, and now only Sam and Anna are sitting down. 

Anna nods. Dean thinks maybe the others don’t notice the way she presses her lips together, but she isn’t letting him catch her eye and he can feel a fine tremble under Harvey’s skin. Everyone needs time to process. He’ll come back later and talk to Anna alone.

“Right,” he says, and fixes her with a look in case her angel senses tell her he isn’t totally buying that’s all she has for him. “I think we need to regroup. Meet up again later. You good with that?”

He may be a little too aggressive in the way he asks her that, but she nods without hesitation. 

“Yes. Believe me, Dean, I want to see my brother as much as you do. Castiel has come a long way from the soldier I remember. And he was an archangel, and I gave him orders.” 

The look that flashes across her face now is wonder.

“Glad we could give you a thrill,” Dean says.

Harvey’s hand tightens and Dean shakes his head. Yeah, so he’s being ungrateful, but Anna just knocked back his hope of getting Cas back, and so soon after accepting it was Cas. He needs time to deal.

Rap says a more polite goodbye, hugging Anna and thanking her, and they make their way back to the car. Harvey slides into the back again and Dean throws the keys to Sam. The gratitude on Harvey’s face when Dean gets in next to him and pulls him into a one armed hug is worth it, even if he does get another considering look from Sam. He’ll have to ask what’s going through his brother’s mind, and with all the agreements they’ve made lately there’s a good chance Sam will tell him.

For now, he tucks his chin over Harvey’s head and strokes a hand up and down the guys arm. Harvey’s been taking care of Dean, and it’s time to return the favour. Besides, Dean’s tired, tired enough to fall asleep right here with Harvey pressed against him and Sam and Rap in the front. And there’s nothing he can come up with when his brain’s sluggish and shocked. The rumble of the Impala soothes him, lulling him, pulling him towards sleep. He lets it.


	19. Chapter 19

He blinks awake on the river bank. This time, Charlie’s hair is short. 

“Hey, you,” she says. And leans back against a nearby tree, crossing her legs at the ankles and watching Dean as he struggles upright. 

He feels bruised. It makes no sense, no sense at all. The bruises he got when he got knocked out in the woods never came up, and they stopped hurting before he left Harvey’s place this morning. Rubbing at his side, he winces.

“Sorry about that,” Charlie says. “It looks like the fight might be coming to you, after all.”

She doesn’t sound as sorry about it as she could do.

“What?” Dean looks around. The forest is as calm and peaceful as ever, the grass and river and canopy all as he remembers them from the other night. Charlie has a streak of what looks like blood up her cheek, black in the moonlight. “You going to tell me what this fight is now?”

“Sorry,” Charlie says. “Not sure I can. You’ll figure it out, though. You and Cas. You are looking for Cas, right?”

“Cas is using the whole fucking planet as his vessel,” Dean says. “He doesn’t seem to be taking calls.”

Charlie pulls a face and tips her head from side to side.

“What?” Dean asks. “Charlie, if you know something, just tell me, already. This isn’t fair.”

“A lot of things aren’t fair,” Charlie, cheerfully. “Getting ripped to pieces by some entitled Frankenstein and dumped in a bathtub wasn’t fair. Especially when it didn’t need to happen. Still, here I am.”

“Charlie…”

“Don’t come over all maudlin on me, hero,” Charlie says. “Looks like my adventure isn’t over yet, and your’s certainly isn’t.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at. And I’d rather be back with…” He pauses, frowns over at Charlie. It isn’t that he thinks Charlie will judge him, not really. And he’s already been about as open with Sam as he can manage for now. It’s more… Charlie’s right. They left her to die, basically, and here Dean is wanting to moan that he’s on a riverbank instead of next to Harvey. Still, it seems dishonest not to tell her. “I’d rather get back to Harvey.”

“Harvey, is it?” Charlie asks, tilting her head and smiling at him. “Is he as hot as Cas?”

“He’s gorgeous, Charlie,” Dean says, “but it’s not fair to compare him to Cas.”

“Then don’t,” she says, shrugging. “And I’m happy for you, I really am, but you aren’t going to have long before the battle reaches you. I think we’re holding them off on our side, but it turns out they’re just the reinforcements. The main force is coming right for you. You need to get all your ducks in a row, here, tiger, and Cas is your biggest duck.”

Dean groans and drops back onto the grass. He lies with his arms out by his sides and stares up at the stars he can see through the branches.

“Either tell me what the fuck you’re talking about or just let me go back,” Dean says.

“Fair enough,” Charlie says. “And I really am sorry, Dean. I’d love to think you had a proper chance at being with someone who’s good for you. At least you’ve had a few days, right?”

Before Dean can demand to know what she means, he hears Sam’s voice, hears Rap replying, and he’s back in the Impala with Harvey heavy against him. The bruised feeling still sits on his ribs.


	20. Chapter 20

Dean’s quiet as they traipse into Harvey’s house. He keeps his arm around the other man, grateful for the warmth and contact. Harvey squeezes him round the waist as they reach the living room and pulls away. 

“I really need a drink,” Harvey says. “How about the rest of you?”

“It’s mid-afternoon,” Rap says. She catches herself and stares at Harvey for a moment. He stares back, one eyebrow raised. Rap pulls a face. “Yeah. Go on, then. Make mine a double.”

“I’ve got red wine,” Harvey says. “How do I do a double red wine?”

“I’ll take two bottles,” Rap says, not breaking eye-contact. “One in each hand.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Dean says, ”but maybe we should hold off on the drinking for now. We’ve all got a lot to take in. Besides, I could swear you had bourbon in here the other night.”

“So, that’s a yes on the drink as long as it’s bourbon?” Harvey asks. 

There’s something tight under his words and Dean looks from him to Rap, who’s hiding it better. It’s still there, though. Rap’s dealt with crap kind of like this before, but Harvey’s had that one run in with Cas. Or an imprint of Cas. Whatever. Neither of them have been through the near-constant shifting in worldview that Dean and Sam have been rolling with for years. He rocks back on his feet and offers Harvey a smile.

“Just the one, and watch out for Sam. He can’t take his drink.”

“I can take my drink just fine,” Sam says, but his tone is closer to teasing than his stance and the tension around his eyes say he should be. He’s picked up on the current in the room. “It’s Dean you want to watch out for, Harvey. He’s a clingy drunk.”

“Then I’ll get him a triple,” Harvey says.

Dean smirks and winks before anyone can try to outdo him, but the thrum of tension under his breastbone doesn’t waver. They’ve met up with a ghost today, and not the kind he’s happy to hunt. He doesn’t even know what Charlie is. As for Cas…

He’s got to wonder: is that why he’s drawn to Harvey? Is it Harvey he likes, or is it some side-effect from having more of Cas’ Grace than most things? 

Then again, everything’s got Cas’ Grace in it, now, and Dean hasn’t found himself getting turned on by rocks or anything. The settee near him isn’t giving him a thrill. Maybe it is just he’s drawn to Harvey. 

Second-guessing this thing is giving him a headache. And they have all manner of other crap to worry about, crap he really needs to talk to Sam about, if for no other reason than Sam’s had this look on his face that says his huge nerd brain’s chomping away at something, and Dean wants to know what it is.

Dean and Sam share a look over Rap’s head as Harvey pours her drink. Sam shakes his head, indicates to Dean that he should stay where he is for now. Right. Okay. So, they’ll talk later, when Harvey is more settled. And Rap. Dean nods, turns to accept his drink. The liquid is dark amber, oddly soothing. Despite what he said, he takes a drink.

“We got any plans for the rest of the day?” Dean asks. “Any more friends you have who might turn out to be someone we’ve got killed?”

“We didn’t get Anna killed, Dean,” Sam points out. He’s firm, certain. “That whole mess with the angels was already going on before we were born. Anna would’ve been dragged back into it at some point or other. And we didn’t make her go back in time.”

“We didn’t keep her safe from her people finding her, though, did we? We didn’t stop them taking her and, well, look at what happened to Cas. Anna was probably stuck with Naomi and we didn’t have a clue.”

“Exactly, Dean,” Sam says, and he still hasn’t taken a drink, the tumbler held in his hand as though he’s more or less forgotten about it. “We couldn’t know. And Anna was an angel again. Back then, did we even know angels were so screwed up? That we could help them? Hell, we’ve been out of our depth for so many years we’ve convinced ourselves we can take on anything, but seeing Cas-”

Sam cuts off, his expression tight.

They really need to talk about Cas. Seeing him like that, a mass of tentacles and wings and those galaxy-eyes, hammered home to Dean that his best friend was far from human. Sam believed Cas to be poisoned by the Darkness, that Cas was heading to being the next Lucifer. Sam has to still be dealing with the choices he made over that.

“Maybe we couldn’t keep her safe,” Dean concedes, needing Sam to pull himself out of whatever images he has replaying in his mind, “but we could have tried. We were so wrapped up in our own problems-”

“Like stopping the End of Days?” Sam asks. “Anna doesn’t blame us, all right? She as good as said so. And she is back, so if you want to make it up to her, you have the chance. Hell, I’ll help you pick out the flowers.”

“Not sure it’s a bunch of roses situation, Sam,” Dean says, and his energy leaves him in a rush. He slumps down on the settee and pats the seat next to him when Harvey hovers uncertainly nearby. “Come on, man. Don’t wimp out on me now. Get down here.”

A slight smile plays on Harvey’s lips as he joins Dean, leaning into him. He’s warm against Dean’s shoulder, a grounding presence, and the sluggish lack of energy turns to sleepiness. Dean yawns.

“We keeping you up?” Sam asks.

“You all look like you could do with more sleep to me,” Rap says.

“Dean had a nap in the car,” Harvey says, his voice slightly muffled where he’s turned his face into Dean’s shoulder. “Not that I’d mind taking him back to bed if he’s still tired.”

It’s almost worth it for the look on Sam’s face. Almost. Dean stops himself from shifting, from pulling away. Instead, he wraps an arms around Harvey and rubs his thumb in circles on the guy’s upper arm. 

“Bed later,” he promises, and some of the tension he can feel in Harvey’s body fades. “Right now, we just need a few minutes to regroup.”

“And to drink,” says Rap, “As my mum always said, it’s past five in the afternoon somewhere.”

She takes a large gulp from her glass of wine, settling on the floor when she’s done. Looking up at Sam, she raises an eyebrow.

“You got some reason for hovering over me?”

Sam glances at Rap, at Dean, at the drink in his hand, and back at Dean. He sets the tumbler down on a low table near the window and runs a hand through his hair. Dean stills, his thumb partway through a circle.

“I’m going to check in with a few contacts. You take a minute to…regroup, and I’ll be back.”

Dean opens his mouth to protest, but Sam shakes his head again and Dean stays where he is, watching as Sam nods at the others and leaves. Harvey lifts his head, probably watching Sam, too, and Dean resumes his soothing circles.

Rap drains her drink and squints into the empty glass as though more might be hiding in the bottom.

“If I have any more, I’ll actually be needing that nap,” she muses. “On the other hand, I just met an angel. Well, found out my friend is an angel. Sort of. And we’re all angels. Sort of. Or have parts of one sloshing about in us. Maybe a second glass of wine is allowed.”

She uncurls from her position on the floor and stretches out, rising to her knees and pushing her hand up enough to grab the bottom from the table where Harvey has left it. When she sits back down, she doesn’t bother with the glass. 

“Shut up,” she says to Dean, but there’s no real heat in it. “I’m going to drink this and think about how weird the world is. Then, after I can stand again, I’m going to make stew and dumplings, because that’s normal and hearty and shit I need in my life. I’ll be needing that settee.”

She gestures at Dean and Harvey with the bottle, and Dean frowns.

“Um, where are we supposed to go?”

“I’m at least two glasses’ worth in by now, Dean,” Rap says, her voice steady despite the fact the hand holding the bottle is wavering. “I don’t really care. Not here. Harvey has a bed, doesn’t he? Go sit on that.”

“You’re…you’re sending us to Harvey’s room?”

Dean feels Harvey shudder, and at first thinks he’s feeling ill or is upset, but a low chuckle clues him in. Harvey peels himself away from Dean and the look on his face is all affection.

“You just think we should talk and aren’t anything like as subtle as you think you are, Aunt Miriam,” Harvey says. Fondness fills his voice, almost hiding the shakiness. “But you raised me to listen to my elders, so…”

Harvey stands, pulling Dean to his feet, and waves at Rap where she’s smiling to herself and tipping the bottle up to her lips. 

In the bedroom, Harvey shuts the door and walks past Dean to climb onto the bed, arranging the cushions and sitting back against them. With a slight smirk, he pats the space next to him and Dean moves from the spot he’s stopped on by the door. 

“Did she really just send us to your room?” Dean asks, kneeling on the bed near Harvey and trying to catch up with what is happening.

“Yeah, she does that,” Harvey says. There’s no sense he’s annoyed his aunt has sent him to bed, in the middle of the day, in his own house. “She just wants to give us some space to talk, I think.”

“Yeah? She’s sure we’re not going to get up to anything more interesting?” Dean can’t help but ask, even though he’s already moving to sit with his back against the headboard.

“You seriously want to?” Harvey asks. “Knowing she’s out in the living room? Because, it’s been a weird morning and it would be good to get my mind off it…”

He tails off, an eyebrow raised, and strokes a hand up Dean’s leg from just above the knee. Dean catches it and tucks it inside both of his hands.

“Yeah, no. Maybe not. Talking is, er, it’s not something I’m great at, but I’ve been working on it.”

“Then practice has to be a good thing, right?” Harvey asks. He’s still doing his best to be light-hearted, Dean can tell, but it’s wavering nearly as much as Rap’s hand was. “Got to say, not sure what to say about all the…I mean, you said things with…It’s just…”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Dean says. “I get that.”

They sit in silence for a while, Harvey’s hand between Dean’s, and it’s quiet, peaceful, in a way that just makes Dean think about all the things around him, all the objects and items that Cas gave some of his Grace to. God, there must be spiders and insects and rats somewhere not far away, from what Dean’s read about them, and they’ll have Grace, too. And Anna said it was a medium, that it kept an imprint, that she remembers being a freaking tree. What does that mean for Cas? Will he remember being a bed? A spider? A…a… Dean’s mind runs out at the sheer number of things he could choose to list.

“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Harvey asks. “About Castiel?”

“Cas,” Dean corrects. He squeezes Harvey’s hand and lifts it to his mouth, kisses it. It feels like something he should do just now. He breathes the next words onto Harvey’s knuckles. “I call him Cas.”

“Do you want to talk about him to me?” Harvey asks.

“You didn’t hear enough about him at Anna’s?” Dean can’t imagine that anyone wants to hear even more about their…about an ex than Harvey has already heard, but Harvey’s right there on the bed beside him, offering to listen, making no move to leave.

“Pretty sure you’ve got a lot more to say. Besides, I’ve got more of his…Grace? Well, I’ve got more of that than anyone. I’m a pool of Grace.”

“A rock pool,” Dean says, without thinking, because, yeah, that’s the important part here. He’s already told Harvey he isn’t good at this.

“A rock pool,” Harvey repeats, as though that was a serious addition. “And maybe I met him, or some manifestation of an imprint of him, and maybe it’s left this tattoo on me.” He stops and shrugs. “I kind of want to know more, and I think you need to tell me more. You said you lost him. And now, maybe, you need to talk through how you feel about it. I mean, losing an angel to the whole earth isn’t like having a human die, is it?”

“No,” Dean says. “Not…exactly. He isn’t… Look, you gotta understand, Cas and me? We never really…talked. I have struggled for a long time to be honest with the people I love. Had me some screwed up ideas in my head, courtesy of my life, and it never seemed like the right time to talk to Cas about how I felt.”

“So you never…?” Harvey stops and looks away. “Huh.”

“What? You think that makes it less real?” 

Before Dean can get annoyed about it, Harvey twists his whole body so he’s curled more towards Dean, his brown eyes warm and direct.

“Does he love you?”

Dean wants to leave. He wants to lean in and kiss Harvey. He thinks either one would be a mistake.

“I think so,” he says. “But he’s an angel, so who knows what love means to them? And the last time I saw him… Oh, man. I would need all kinds of therapy.” 

“I remember you telling Anna about the wings,” Harvey says. “They sound amazing.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, because they were. “And weird. Really, definitely, can not stress enough how not-human that all was.”

“And now he’s everything,” Harvey says. 

“Which is even less human,” Dean responds, the weight of that still not fully settled in him, even after half a year to work on it.

“Or more human. I mean, he’s a part of every human, right? If what Anna says is true, doesn’t that mean his Grace is taking on the experiences, the memories, of every human? How do you get more human than every human?”

“You sound like you’re trying to talk me into trying for something with Cas,” Dean says. 

He knows the confusion is clear in his voice, and maybe a bit of hurt. He thought Harvey wanted something more. Not that Dean knows yet if he can give him that, and if Cas really is gone, then he’s going to have to mourn him all over again. Still, the closest he’s come to having one lover tell him to go to someone else is when Lisa told Dean to go and hunt with Sam, and that wasn’t the same. He thinks he gets some of what she means, now, about how his bond with Sam was unhealthy. Is unhealthy, but at least they’re working on it. His thing with Cas isn’t the same. For one thing, Lisa wasn’t sending Dean off to be in another romantic relationship. 

“Hey,” Harvey says, and he sits up, pulling his hand from between Dean’s and cupping Dean’s face. “Hey, I’m not trying to get rid of you. I meant what I said. But this thing you have with Cas, it seems like it’s been going on for a long time, and I’m not a bastard, Dean. No way would I stop you getting him back if it’s possible, no matter what that means for us. I do know I just met you, even if it, well, it doesn’t feel like it.”

There’s a quick flash of worry in Harvey’s eyes and Dean knows it’s occurred to both of them, that this attraction might be as much Dean being pulled to Cas’ Grace.

“No. It doesn’t feel like it,” Dean murmurs, “but I don’t think it’s just the Grace.”

He sees Harvey blink, sees the relief of that sink into him, sees it in the tug of his lips into a smile.

“Good. That’s good. But still, Dean, Cas is a huge part of who you are and if we are to have anything real, then it has to be something we can talk about. Right?”

Dean nods. 

“And we need to find out if you can get him back,” Harvey says. “And we need to find out why I, out of everyone, has more of his Grace and a tattoo that might be from him. I mean, you have a lot of his Grace, too, right? And you don’t have the tattoo.”

Dean shakes his head.

“So, we may have a shot at something good, we need to find out more about why we’re rock-pools and not the rest of the people around us, and we need to see about getting your angel back,” Harvey goes on, as though it’s just a simple to-do list that can be sorted by the time Rap has her stew made.

“Right.” Dean manages a smile. “That’s all. Simple.”

And he needs to find out what Charlie meant about the fight coming to him. Can’t forget that. That’s something he needs to share with Sam, as soon as he gets him on his own. It’s not that he wants to keep things from Harvey, not at all, but it’s going to take practice to work up to telling him everything. He thinks it’s a good sign he even wants to.

A knocking at the door brings Dean away from Harvey, half off the bed with his hand reaching for his gun before he hears Harvey call out that whoever it is should come in. Dean has got to warn him about that. Even in his own home, the guy’s going to need to be more careful.

Sam steps into the room, his gaze averted from the bed to start with, and Dean can’t blame him. Over the years, Sam’s caught Dean up to all sorts. 

“You get hold of those contacts?” Dean asks, a hint of warning there that Sam had best be going to share any information. Dean isn’t the only one who’s been working on this healthier relationship thing.

Nodding, Sam makes eye contact. He looks troubled.

“Yeah. I called around, asked if anyone else has reported a tattoo appearing.”

“And?” 

Dean hears the mattress squeak, feels Harvey slide up beside him, one of his hands coming to rest on Dean’s back.

“And it turns out Harvey isn’t the only one. There are six more. I’ve got people arranging for photos, or at least sketches, to be sent to us.”

“Only six?” Harvey asks.

“Yeah. So, you’re still special,” Sam says, seemingly trying to make a joke. “Look, when we get the images, I’ll go back and ask Anna to have another go at working out what they mean. See if they’re all the same. I wish we had a photo of Cas’ tattoo.”

They hardly have any photos of Cas at all, but Dean doesn’t bring that up just now. The faded snap of Cas he has back at the bunker, the one with the angel squinting into sunlight out at some truck-stop somewhere, is a poor reminder of the guy. 

“You come up with any ideas about how to contact Cas?” Dean asks. It’s something he’s asked a lot over the last few months. Hannah said they couldn’t manage it, but she hadn’t looked convinced. 

“Nothing that looks like it’ll work,” Sam says.

Neither one of them brings up the fact that Anna said his consciousness was missing. They’ve been in a weird holding pattern of mourning Cas and not accepting he’s dead for too long to give up now.

“I just can’t see why his tattoo would show up if he’s gone, Sam,” Dean says. He feels Harvey flatten his palm against Dean’s back, the contact soothing. 

“I never thought he’d turn into Mother Earth,” Sam says, and even Dean has to take a moment after that. 

Sam’s phone beeps and he turns to it, his expression showing a flicker of surprise before he brings it to Dean. On the phone is a photo of someone’s tanned stomach, flat and toned above an edge of something blue and lacy. Above one hip is a tattoo that at first glance looks like Harvey’s. 

“What’s the surprise?” Dean asks, glancing at Sam.

“That central sigil?” Sam asks, pointing. “It’s Lucifer’s on Harvey.”

Dean nods. “Yeah, I remember you saying.” 

And doesn’t he wish he could wipe it off, having any hint of Lucifer near his…near Harvey. 

“This one isn’t Lucifer’s,” Sam says, tapping his screen. The sigil grows larger, filling the screen. Sam sighs, as though he isn’t sure what he’s looking at, and meets Dean’s eyes. “This one is Michael’s.”


	21. Chapter 21

“Michael’s?” Dean frowns at Sam. “Why would anyone have Michael’s sigil? I thought you said Lucifer’s was in a few warding things Cas has done.”

“Yeah, it is,” Sam says. “It’s carved into our ribs, for a start, but this one has Michael’s. Again, I have no idea why, but maybe we should go and see Anna again.”

“We can do that,” Dean says, “but I say we get everyone on it. Hannah said to call her if we got something new. This is new. I mean, the whole tattoo thing is new, but this is really new.” 

He stops, closes his eyes for a moment, and tries to gather his thoughts. When he opens his eyes, he sees Sam staring at him intently.

“We have Anna. Great. And she has some knowledge from before Naomi’s wipes. Even better. But Hannah has Michael. We never really got that dick to talk, but maybe we can give it another go.”

“You want to get Hannah to bring Michael here?” Sam asks, speaking carefully as though he’s waiting to be sure Dean’s had too much to drink. 

“We can have her bring him to Anna’s place.”

Sam opens his mouth, closes it again, and looks back at his phone as though it will have answers for him beyond the shot of the stomach. 

“This is the Hannah who helped you with the Darkness? With getting all of those swords for Cas?” Harvey asks, and Dean is reminded yet again that this is all new for Harvey. “And Michael’s the one who tried to make you into a vessel?”

Harvey doesn’t sound as though he’s sure he’s getting all the words right, but he’s showing no signs of cutting and running. 

“Yeah.” Dean turns enough to catch those brown eyes. “It’s all right. Hannah has a handle on him. And you don’t have to come, if you don’t want.”

“How many people get to meet an archangel?” Harvey asks. “Are we going now?”

Sam makes a noise that sounds like frustration and Dean turns back to see his brother scrolling through something on his phone. He puts the phone to his ear as Dean watches, but he looks at Harvey.

“We need to give Hannah time to get here. Hang on. Yeah. Hannah? It’s Sam. Yeah.” 

Dean listens as Sam explains what they want and by the sounds of it Hannah needs persuading.

“I know,” Sam says. “Yeah, I know. I get that. It’s not… Yeah. Right. But-”

Sam cuts off, looking up at the ceiling and pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Look, we know that, Hannah. We do. But this isn’t the end of it, not if what’s happening here is any sign. Yeah. Well, please do.”

Pulling the phone away from his ear, Sam grimaces.

“She’s gone to check something. Sounds like they have some committee up there, now. Can’t say she sounds keen on visiting. Says Cas’ sacrifice should be honoured, like that means never thinking about him again.”

Before Dean can respond, Sam’s got the phone back at his ear.

“Hi. That was quick. Yeah, okay. Right. We’ll see you then.”

“She on her way?” Dean asks.

His brother nods, but he doesn’t look delighted with the outcome.

“Says it’ll take a few hours, at least. They’ve moved the portal again, but it’s still a good ten hours from here if they get hold of a decent car.”

With nothing much else to do, they traipse out to the main part of the house and find Rap in the kitchen, singing and dancing along to some song about dragons wanting to retire. Dean covers his ears, but she taps him on the head with a wooden spoon and gestures at him until he stops it. The kitchen is already filling with the scent of frying onions and that, at least, is something that eases a bit of Dean’s tension. They might as well have a good meal.

Harvey moves past Dean and joins his aunt, throwing Dean a pitying look before joining Rap in some weird dance that involves getting a whole bunch of ingredients to the right place but only on the beat. It’s not how Dean’s ever cooked. Seems to work, though. 

He can’t quite let himself go enough to join in, not even when Harvey takes his hands and drags him further into the kitchen, but he does try, sort of, enough that Harvey laughs and lets him sink down onto a chair after a minute. Sam joins him, skirting the edge of the kitchen as though he’s afraid he’ll get dragged in.

“What are they doing?” Sam asks, leaning into Dean’s space and lowering his voice. “They do get how serious this all is, right?”

“As much as they can without having had the full nightmarish tour yet, yeah,” Dean says. “Lighten up, Sam. This must just be a way they cope. Not like we haven’t tried laughing it off every now and then.”

The look Sam sends him says that’s always been more Dean’s thing, and that it’s been annoying, but he lets it go. The music, at any rate, fills the spaces between all the words they aren’t saying, words they will say, but haven’t yet worked up to. At least it’s better than knowing the words won’t be said. 

When the food is ready, Rap adds red wine to the clutter on the table, a clutter that wasn’t there before she started cooking. It’s an oasis in a desert, this meal, surrounded on all sides by endless struggle, with more no doubt on the way, but Dean’s been an expert in setting up camp in such oases for most of his life. When Rap sets his bowl down in front of him, he’s more than able to push the worries aside to enjoy the food.

“I’m getting the sense you might like it,” Rap says a few minutes later. Warm amusement ripples through her words.

Dean looks up, one cheek puffed out by a lump of dumpling and beef, and realises everyone is watching him, Sam with an edge of fond exasperation, Rap with humour and Harvey with something that can only be affection. And a slight edge of shock.

He doesn’t bother swallowing fast enough to try words, sticking up a thumb instead and turning back to hunting out the best piece of potato. He hears Sam sigh.

“Dean’s got a fine appreciation for a plate of food,” Sam says.

“Good on him,” Rap says. “I don’t cook it so it can sit and be stared at. Speaking of, you can have something else if you’d prefer, Sam.”

“Er. No. Sorry. It’s great. I just don’t eat as much as Dean.”

Rap doesn’t press it, but Dean gets the feeling she’s going to give Sam something else to eat if he doesn’t make a decent attempt at his stew. Fortunately, by the time Dean’s had a second helping, Sam’s managed most of his bowl and looks faintly surprised, perhaps not having expected to like it so much. 

“It’s getting late,” Rap says. “We should think about getting some sleep. Are we heading out as soon as your angel friends are here?”

Dean isn’t sure what to say, largely because the term ‘friends’ jars. Hannah? After what happened six months back, he’s willing to put her under that heading, but Michael? Yeah, no. 

“I’m not sure even Hannah gets why the middle of the night would be a bad time to turn up, so, yeah, we’d better be ready,” Sam says. “Should we all stay here, or…?”

“We’ll head back to mine,” Rap says, as though there can be no reason for anyone to argue. “I’ll borrow your car, Harvey.”

Harvey waves at a bowl on the counter and Rap stands and plucks a key from it. 

“Might as well get going, then,” she says. “Get as much rest as we can. Come on, Sam. I’ll make you a hot chocolate to help you sleep.”

“I don’t think that’s a soporific,” Sam says, but Rap has already left the room. 

Throwing a quick wave in Dean’s direction, Sam follows her.

“Wait,” Dean says, and he catches Sam halfway through the living room, a quizzical look on his face as he looks back over his shoulder at Dean. “You got anything you need to say to me? Come on, Sam. You’ve been working your way through something in that big brain of yours. I saw it at Anna’s.”

Comprehension floods Sam’s face. 

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Er.” He flicks a glance over Dean’s shoulder, but when Dean checks Harvey isn’t there. The sound of clattering from the kitchen suggests Harvey’s cleaning up. “It’s nothing to do with the case. Not really.”

“Then what is it to do with?” But the way Sam checked to see where Harvey was has given Dean some clue. He shifts on his feet, suddenly not sure he wants to have this conversation after all. “It’s about Cas, isn’t it? Cas…and me?”

Sam nods.

“Well, go on,” Dean says, lifting his chin. “Ask what you want to. Let’s get this cleared up.” He knows it’s ridiculous to be in something like a fighting stance, especially as Sam has seen him acting all sappy with Harvey, but there’s still something about Cas that leaves Dean feeling bruised. Vulnerable.

The twist of Sam’s lips looks close to displeasure. When he leans in and speaks, it’s with a lowered voice. His words spill, hushed and intense, into the space between them.

“Look, I just thought… I thought you and Cas had something going on, okay?”

“You mean…?” Dean waves a hand from himself to some empty space a foot or so from his body, as though that will convey what he means to Sam.

“Yeah. Something physical.” Apparently the gesture worked. “And you’ve obviously talked about Cas with Harvey. I mean, Harvey acts as though Cas is your ex. I just… I thought, when you were in Purgatory. I mean, when you came back…”

Dean holds up a hand and Sam’s stuttering words stop entirely.

“Okay. We should probably talk about this. More of that crap we should deal with. I mean, it’s my crap, but, yeah, I guess the three of us have been a pretty intense little circle of screwed up…screwing up, haven’t we?”

He curses himself for keeping using variations on the word ‘screw’, but Sam thinking Dean had been getting it on with Cas is just…well, he’s going to need some time to let that one settle. Just what had Sam thought Dean and Cas were up to when they went off on cases together? No. Not the time to think about it.

“If it’s nothing to do with this current mess, then, yeah, we can leave it until later,” Dean goes on, and is relieved when Sam nods in agreement.

Moments later, he finds himself wrapped in a Sam hug, and clings back for only a moment before Rap calls Sam and his brother disappears out of the house. 

He turns to find Harvey in the doorway to the kitchen, a bowl in one hand and a tea-towel in the other. The look on his face is soft.

“You heard any of that?” Dean feels the need to ask.

Harvey nods.

“Yeah. Sam thought the two of you were actually together, then? Do you want to talk about it?”

Dean shakes his head.

“Not right now, man. Right now, I just want to curl up in bed and catch some sleep. That all right?”

Harvey vanishes for a moment and returns without the tea-towel, holing his hand out to Dean. When Dean takes his hand, he reaches up the short distance between them and presses his lips to Dean’s in a kiss as soft as his look had been.

“We can do that,” Harvey says. “Come on.”

And Dean lets himself be guided.


	22. Chapter 22

Dean’s in a warm nest of blankets and Harvey when his phone rings. Grumbling, he ducks his head under the covers for a moment, wishing he could just ignore it. 

Harvey’s hand shifts against Dean’s stomach, the guy’s breath tickling Dean’s shoulders when he speaks.

“Is that Sam?”

“Probably,” Dean mutters, rolling himself far enough out of the blankets to reach the phone and stop it ringing. “Yeah?”

Sam’s voice tells him to be dressed and ready to go, but Dean flops back under the covers when he hangs up, turning to tuck his head under Harvey’s chin.

“Don’t we have to get up?” Harvey asks.

Dean grunts.

“You want Sam to come in and get us?” Harvey asks. “Aunt Miriam’s got a key. And she’ll come right in here and drag us out of bed.”

The image of Rap, Sam and, fuck, Hannah and Michael all bursting in and staring down at him makes Dean groan, but it gets him out from under the covers. He sits on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, and tries to make sense of the dream he just had. He was back in that forest, the sounds of battle distant, and Charlie wasn’t there. He can’t remember any more of it. But Charlie wasn’t there. That sticks out. That feels…worrying. 

“Dean? You okay?”

Harvey’s hands touch down on his shoulders, the fingers pressing and soothing, and he leans into the touch. The tattered threads of dream-memory clear. Whatever that whole thing means, he’ll have to figure it out as he goes, same as with everything. 

“Fine,” he says, and shakes his head. “No. Well, I’ve been worse. Just been having a dream about a friend, and she didn’t show up this time.”

“Is this one of the friends you’ve lost?” 

Harvey’s hands continue their calming motions as Dean nods. 

“Yeah. One of them.” And there have been far too many, hardly any of whom deserved a fraction of what happened to them. “Better get on with saving the people we have left, right?”

He reaches up and pats one of Harvey’s hands before pushing himself to his feet. The bruised feeling is still there, but it’s lessened overnight. 

Getting dressed takes no time at all, and Dean heads to the kitchen and makes coffee while Harvey’s still rooting around in his drawers for something to wear. Dean doesn’t know why it’s taking him so long. The guy always looks good. Then again, when Harvey wanders into the kitchen, a still sleepy smile on his face, Dean has to admire the forest green sweater he’s wearing. It’s not like the few extra minutes have been a problem, anyway. 

“We’re meeting Sam at Anna’s in twenty minutes,” Dean says, when Harvey steps in close and folds himself around Dean.

“Hmm. I promise not to strip you here and now,” he responds, and burrows even closer. 

It’s the most domestic Dean’s life has been in ages, leaving with Harvey and getting in his car as though they’re both off to work and not to a meeting with far more angels than can be good for anybody. If Harvey’s nervous about it, he’s doing a good job of not letting it show, and Dean makes sure to keep an eye on him as they reach Anna’s and make their way to the door. If Harvey looks like he needs to get out of there, Dean will insist that happens. 

Anna opens the door, the shock of seeing her nearly as strong. It doesn’t matter that Dean knew she’d be here. He’s still used to thinking of her as gone.

She smiles, an edge to it he tries to read and fails, and leads them through to the same room they sat in the day before. Hannah stands in front of the fireplace, wearing the same vessel she had the last time. Her chin is up, and two men flank her, wearing the sort of suits Dean’s used to seeing on the generic angels he’s never bothered getting to know. Chances have always been they’ll end up dead before it becomes important. 

“Where’s Mike?” he asks.

There’s no Sam, either. No Rap. Hannah glances at Anna, who gestures and inclines her had as though granting her the floor. Interesting. Dean is struck by the memory that Anna was Cas’ boss, once. He wonders what that means she was to Hannah.

“Michael is waiting,” she says. “I want to look at this tattoo myself first. I’ll decide if we bring the archangel here.”

The flicker of her eyes to Anna is almost quick enough Dean misses it. Almost. 

“Right,” he says, as cheerfully as he can manage. “Sure. You drag him all the way here and then leave him waiting in the car. Makes sense.”

“He’s not… Dean, I understand you want to find a way to bring Castiel back, but the greater chance is that he’s bound up in the Earth for good. And if all that has happened because of it are a few easily killed new monsters, then we shouldn’t disturb things.”

“A few…? Hannah, you might not care what happens down here on Earth-”

“That isn’t it,” Hannah cuts in. She actually looks pained at his statement. “I’ve consulted everyone in Heaven who might know about these monsters. They all seem to feel it’s just the potential with which Castiel has infused the Earth, working its way to a new equilibrium. We shouldn’t do anything to stop that being achieved.”

“And exactly how many of the surviving angels even know about the Darkness? Or what it could become? Because from what I can see, you just mean Mikey, and forgive me if I ain’t taking his word as law.”

“I thought that’s who we wanted to check out this tattoo,” Harvey says.

“And we’ll run everything he says through as much checking and double-checking and suspicion as we need to,” Dean says. “I’m not believing him that we should leave Cas buried.”

“Castiel is not buried,” Hannah says, sharing a look with Anna that Dean can’t interpret. “He’s a part of the Earth. He isn’t under a few feet of it.”

Anna steps between them, gesturing Dean and Harvey further into the room and encouraging Hannah away from the fireplace. The other two angels stay where they are, expressions more or less blank, but the way they’re standing makes them look about ready to attack at any moment. Dean would expect nothing less from an angel.

“I guess you’ll be wanting me to strip for you,” Harvey says. He sounds a lot more confident than he did yesterday. “Dean’ll be getting jealous, the way all you angels want to see me part-naked.”

Hannah looks at him as though she can’t understand what he’s getting at, before her eyes widen slightly and she looks, not at Dean, but at Anna. Anna nods and shrugs. For a moment, Hannah closes her eyes, and when she opens them again she looks as though she’s unsettled by whatever has passed between the two angels. Even so, she turns to Harvey and nods.

“If you would.”

Harvey lifts his sweater, revealing skin Dean is starting to know well. It shouldn’t be such a turn-on, but it is, having the man showing off even a part of his body in this room, before these angels. It’s also worrying, the way Hannah leans in and reaches out, glancing up at Harvey for permission before skating her fingers along the tattoo. She frowns, her dark eyes narrowing. 

When she straightens and steps back, her eyes turn to Dean. She looks…sympathetic.

“That is certainly Lucifer’s sigil,” she says. “I don’t understand all of it, but some of it looks similar to Castiel’s tattoo.”

“You saw that?” Dean asks, and squashes any feeling he might have about it instantly. Not like he and Cas ever got around to…talking or anything. Dean’s got no reason to feel anything about Hannah having… Well, he hasn’t got any reason to feel anything about Hannah except gratitude she’s dragged herself down from Heaven, even if she is being cagey about bringing Michael in. 

“Yes,” Hannah says, and that’s apparently all Dean’s getting on that one. “But it wasn’t identical. Some of the elements I believe are for warding are there, but others are different.”

“You believe they’re for warding? You don’t know? I thought all angels could read angel.”

Dean looks from Hannah to Anna, and even glances at the two suited angels, who stare back blankly.

Anna speaks up, gesturing them all to sit down as she does so. 

“Our sigils and symbols are complicated. There’s more than one system, for a start, and they’ve changed over time. Gabriel made some significant changes at one point, I suspect partly as a joke, but it’s not as though complete mastery of the sigils has ever been easy or widespread.”

“Cas seems to manage all right,” Dean says, sitting close to Harvey and draping his arm around the guy’s shoulder. Again, Hannah looks at him as though he’s doing something she didn’t expect. “You telling me he’s special?”

“In many ways,” Anna agrees, a slight smile pulling at her lips. She’s sitting side by side with Hannah, the two of them bringing up all the old thoughts about how angels are graceful and otherworldly. “Castiel excelled at spell-work, and at all manner of sigils. I have some skill in the area, but I always turned to him when I needed something more advanced. That he managed to adapt so many of our spells so that you and your brother can perform them is evidence enough of his mastery.”

“Hey, you showed us the angel banishing thing,” Dean says. 

Anna nods, grimacing at what is probably a memory of being hunted by Cas and Uriel. It’s all the weirder now Dean knows they both used to be archangels. He wonders if any part of Anna had any idea her hunters were so powerful, even if most of their powers had been taken from them. 

“Yes, but I was still an angel, even if I was human at the time. And he showed you other spells, other sigils. I’m sure your status as vessels helped, but Castiel still gave you skills you shouldn’t have had. We need someone with his level of understanding to interpret this tattoo.”

“Someone like Mike,” Dean says. “Stands to reason. Archangels must know more about the sigils, right?”

He sees from the ripple of discomfort on Anna’s face that she isn’t all right with thinking of Cas as an archangel. 

“So,” he says, turning to Hannah, “you fetching him, now, or do we have to wait to show you the photo on Sam’s phone?”

Hannah still seems reluctant, but Anna fixes her with those huge eyes and Hannah nods, directing her hench-angels to bring the archangel in. 

Sam arrives with Rap whilst the angels are gone, and takes one of the chairs. Rap takes up position by the fireplace, looking very much like the angels aren’t going to get their spot back when they return. It’s only a few minutes before the angels are back, Michael walking between them as though he’s not a prisoner and they’re his honour guard. He stops a short way into the room and smiles at Dean. Dean tightens his hold on Harvey.

“I understand you have something to show me?” Michael says. “Something with which you need my help.”

“We need your knowledge,” Sam says, and Dean gets the feeling Sam’s protecting him, somehow, even though there’s nothing Dean needs protecting from. “A few tattoos.”

“A few?” Dean asks. “You got another photo?”

Sam shakes his head. “No, but Jody’s taken a few days off. She’s swinging by and picking one of them up. She’ll be here by this evening. If she’s lucky, she might persuade a second one to turn up.”

“In the meantime?” Michael asks. Again, he doesn’t seem to get that he’s a prisoner. He’s still got that smile on his face, confident and condescending. “May I see the ones we have?”

Dean almost makes Sam show the photo first, but Harvey stands and turns to face Michael, his sweater already pulled up. The space he leaves feels cold for a moment. 

“Well, well, well,” Michael says. “What do we have here?”

He sounds unbearably like Lucifer. 

“That’s what you’re meant to be telling us,” Dean says.

“Of course, Dean. Please be patient.” Michael crouches, and Dean gets to watch the third angel in two days stroke Harvey’s skin. It’s getting to be a common thing. “I recognise this handwriting,” he says, his focus on the ink.”

“Handwriting?” Dean asks.

“Of course,” Michael says again, and if he doesn’t stop being smug Dean’s going to kick him in the teeth. “This is Cassiel’s handiwork. That particular flourish on the upstrokes. I’d know it anywhere. I would like to know why he’s put a warding against Lucifer on this boy.”

“Maybe Castiel doesn’t want Lucifer to be able to find him,” Anna says.

Michael stands, his brow furrowing as his head turns to her.

“Anna,” he greets. “So nice to see you with your eyes. It was regrettable, the action I had to take.” If he notices Anna flinch, he gives no sign of it. “And this warding isn’t to stop Lucifer from finding the boy. It’s to stop him from inhabiting him. You say there are seven people with similar tattoos?” He doesn’t wait for anyone to confirm it. “Strange. May I see the photograph?”

Sam hands it over, his mouth set with distaste as the archangel takes his phone.

“Yes,” Michael says. “This one is to keep me out, though why I would want to possess this woman when I already have your father, I don’t know.”

This time, he ignores Sam’s flinch. Dean just glares. 

Sam takes his phone back and Dean can almost feel the desire Sam has to wipe it down.

“What do you think Castiel is planning?” Hannah asks.

“I don’t think Castiel is planning anything,” Michael says. “Cassiel, now, that may be another matter. You forget, you lower angels, that an archangel doesn’t think in your limited ways. My brother gave himself to the Earth whilst in possession of his true memories and at least a portion of his old power. If Castiel were the angel you remember, do you not think he would have warded my true vessel?” At this, Michael turns and smiles at Dean. “Your father is a good substitute, but he isn’t you. We could still be good together, Dean.”

“Try and fry, pal,” Dean says, tensing. 

“That almost sounds like an invitation,” Michael says.

“It isn’t.”

“Enough,” Anna says, and doesn’t back down even when Michael looks at her in a way not too far off the way he did right before burning her up. “This is my home. You won’t threaten Dean here, Michael, archangel or not. If you think I have any respect for your rank, after everything, then you’re very wrong. If you have any idea what these tattoos are about, then tell us. If not, as far as I can see Hannah might as well take you back to whatever prison cell they’ve had you in.”

“Prison cell?” Michael sounds amused. “I haven’t been in a prison cell. I’m the only archangel left in Heaven.”

“Hannah?” Dean asks, but she looks away. “Hannah, what’s he getting at?”

When her eyes meet Dean’s, there’s something like guilt or shame lurking in their depths. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but I tried to give the angels a voice. They…they chose to free Michael.”

“And you let that happen?” Sam asks, disbelief ringing loud in his voice.

“I was outvoted,” Hannah says. “They have let me keep my duties, but…”

“But what?” Anna asks, sounding as puzzled as Dean feels. She turns to look at the other angel, her red hair shining copper in the morning light through the window. It makes her look like fire captured in a still moment. 

“But I have retaken my place in Heaven,” Michael says. “Hannah assists me with the administration required to bring our home back to the way it should be, but I am in charge. I am the only Prince left in Heaven, and I rule as I was meant to.”


	23. Chapter 23

Anna looks almost as ashen as Dean feels, her eyes wider than ever and her lips parted.

“You what?” she says, her breath a whisper of horror.

“I rule,” Michael says, turning a gaze full of benevolent menace on her. “Your place can be reconsidered, Anael, in my new Heaven. So many years in the Cage have taught me that inflexible thinking leads to nothing but pain. There is no need to worry. Heaven will regain the order it has lost, but I won’t pull us straight back into the conflict which landed me in a prison with my brother.”

“Then what are you back to do?” Dean asks, stepping in between Michael and Anna. 

He knows she’s an angel. Some form of one, anyway. But he feels he ought to protect her now, like he didn’t do back then, back when she’d already thrown in her lot with them only to be betrayed and dragged back to Heaven for conditioning. He has more idea what that means now, and he regrets that she suffered through it.

“Believe it or not, Dean,” Michael says. “I truly am here to re-establish order. A better order.”

“One without God?” Sam asks. 

Michael tilts his head, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“Without my father,” he says, but somehow it doesn’t quite sound like an agreement. 

“It’s certainly not going to be with him,” Dean says. “Your dear old dad let all Hell break loose, he let you and Luci get locked up in a crate, a whole slew of your kid brothers and sisters get wasted, and he didn’t show so much as a whisker. He’s gone. He doesn’t care.”

“You have no need to persuade me,” Michael says. “But I do need your assistance. You have something I need.”

“You’re not having my body.” Dean takes a part-step back, his arms moving into something close to a defensive stance. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Harvey’s body language switch to protective, his shoulders pulling back and his expression sharpening. He tries to will the guy to stay out of it. 

“I don’t want your body,” Michael says. He sounds sort of amused. Sort of dismissive. “It seems more than enough people want your body, Dean.”

There’s a curl in the way he says that which has Dean’s hackles rising.

“Then what do you want?” Sam asks, when it becomes clear that Dean isn’t going to stop glaring any time soon.

Michael shrugs. 

“The same thing you do.” He levels a look on Dean that is strong enough to knock a normal person down. “I want Cassiel back here with us. You are going to help me get him back.”

“What?” Dean asks.

“You heard me, Dean. You are going to help me pull Cassiel, my most troublesome little brother, out of the shell he’s got himself burrowed away in.”

“You mean the Earth?” Sam asks. His mouth pulls into one of those looks that means he can’t quite believe how stupid someone is being. 

“Yes, Sam,” Michael agrees. His calm is astounding. “I mean the Earth. You are going to pull Cassiel out of the Earth and we are going to house him in a new vessel. One fit to host an archangel. Not that second-rate example he put up with when he lacked his full power, his full self.”

“Yeah, well, sorry Pal, but we don’t have a Cas vessel handy,” Dean says, “and if this pattern holds Cas’ll have locked all of you arch-bastards out of your meat-suits.”

He knows he’s just lumped Cas in with the other archangels there, but Sam said there were seven people with those tattoos, meaning seven new vessels. One of those must be for Cas. He must have shut himself out, just like Luci was shut out of Harvey. And isn’t that just a great thought? Dean’s new… Harvey’s the Devil’s new vessel. First his brother, then his… Dean would dearly love to live in a world where the people he loved weren’t costumes for Lucifer to wear. 

“We’ll see,” Michael says, seeming unconcerned by the idea. “For now, there is no reason to tamper with the lock on your boyfriend. My most beloved brother has no need of a vessel, and won’t do. Lucifer will stay in his Cage whilst I restore Heaven to what it should be.”

Which should at least mean Harvey’s safe. If he can be considered safe when the biggest nuke in all of the Host is standing almost in front of him. Sam should be off the menu, too, and if Mike doesn’t want to wear Dean… 

“What’s with the new vessel thing, anyway?” Dean asks, jutting his chin at the archangel. Somehow, he feels like he has to keep his hands out to protect Anna and he isn’t even going to try and talk himself down from that thought.

Michael tilts his head, that half-smile he does making Dean want to haul off and hit him. Or douse him in holy oil and set him alight. Whichever.

“Dean,” Michael says, drawing the name out on a falling note, the way a teacher may speak to a child who’s missed the point. “You were my sword, but I have no need of a sword now. Now, I need a scepter. A crown. Whichever symbol of kingship you prefer. Besides,” he adds, taking one deliberate step closer, “even the very best of weapons can be cast aside once it becomes tarnished. Damaged.”

His second step brings him close enough that Dean wants to back away. Even with everything they’ve faced since that day at Stull, this thing in front of Dean is still right up there in the running for the most powerful, for the most terrifying thing Dean’s gone up against. He holds his ground.

The third step has Michael staring directly into Dean’s eyes from the sort of distance he normally only lets Cas get away with. Let Cas. No, Michael’s said they’re getting Cas back, and, fuck it, but Dean wants that. 

“Watch it,” Dean snaps, not sure if he’s talking to Michael or to himself.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” Michael says. He sounds far too much like Lucifer in that moment. “With all you’ve done, with all that’s been done to you, do you truly think I could take you as my vessel, now? You would be a better match for the Morningstar. Only an angel riddled with corruption could bear to reside in you now.”

Michael really doesn’t want him. It’s…it’s a relief, in its way. Dean still bristles.

“This body is too good for you, anyway,” Dean says, and his smirk is wielded rather than worn. 

If it has any impact on Michael, there’s no sign. The bastard still looks smug as he looks Dean up and down as though taking in all of the flaws, all of the damage and rot. 

“Hannah,” Sam says, and if he wants to draw Michael’s attention from Dean it doesn’t work. “Hannah, why didn’t you warn us?”

Dean can’t see Hannah. His whole world is taken up by his father’s eyes, eyes his father can’t be behind, but loaded with that same judgment he saw so often when John Winchester had possession of his body. He hears her voice, though, and she sounds, perhaps, less sure than when she was helping them with Cas.

“Heaven needs order,” she says. “We need order.”

There might be an apology hiding under her words, but there is no sense they will get help from her on this. She is an angel, and has always been on the side of Heaven. Cas remains the only angel to break ranks for the Winchesters. Gabriel faced Lucifer, but that wasn’t for Dean and Sam. Because of them, maybe, but not for them.

“Heaven can have its order,” Anna breaks in, and Dean thinks he could add her to the list of people he loves at the way she’s so clearly holding herself steady with an effort, “but I want you all out of my house. I left Heaven to escape your rules, Michael, and I won’t be bound by them again.”

At first, Dean thinks Michael means to ignore her, or worse, but this close he can see when the archangel’s smile freezes, when his eyes widen. It’s not by much, but it’s enough to show he’s taken aback, that things aren’t going to plan. 

“Get out,” Anna says. Her eons of command make it into that.

Michael takes a step back, and another. If Dean didn’t know how powerful the guy was, he’d say it was against Michael’s will. With a twist of his lips that speaks ill for Anna, the archangel turns his eyes from Dean.

“Hannah, you will remain here. I will await your report.”

With a suddenness Dean has forgotten, Michael vanishes. The snap of wings is shocking, almost a perversion after seeing so many angels’ wings burn to ash in the Fall, and Dean is still staring at the empty space when the other body-guard angels walk out, backs stiff. If they’re anything like Cas was about his wings, they likely hate seeing Michael flap off and leave them like that.

Everything’s quiet for a long-stretch of time. Dean hears his heartbeat, feels it in his throat. Nausea from unused adrenaline has him wanting a drink, but he makes himself breathe through it. 

Warm skin settling against his palm draws him back to the room. Harvey’s eyes are worried, concerned. 

“Are you all right?” he asks, as though he hasn’t just come face-to-face with one half of the Apocalypse twins himself.

“Yeah.” Dean swallows, tries again. “Yeah, I will be. How you holding up?”

Harvey just shakes his head and squeezes Dean’s hand. Not caring who’s watching, Dean tugs on Harvey’s hand and pulls him into a hug, burying his nose in the guy’s neck. He just needs a minute. Just one minute.

Sam gives him nearly thirty seconds before patting him on the back and addressing the room.

“Right,” he hears his brother say. “Looks like we have plenty to go over. And Hannah? You have a lot to explain.”

Sam sounds angry. Dean will be angry, just as soon as he gets the look in his dad’s, in Michael’s, eyes out of the front of his brain. He pries himself away from Harvey and wraps an arm around him as he turns to stand side-by-side with Sam. Hannah looks back with her eyes earnest and warm. 

“He’s the rightful leader of Heaven,” she says. “I did my best, but angels… We need order. It’s what we’re used to.”

Anna snorts, a sound so at odds with the way she spoke to Michael that Dean glances at her. She has her arms crossed and is scowling at Hannah.

“We don’t need his kind of order,” Anna says. “And I don’t believe you think we do, either.”

“You left,” Hannah says. “Anael, you left. As Castiel kept leaving. Michael never left us by choice.”

“Michael was going to let the whole world burn down just so he could murder a little brother he didn’t even want to kill,” Dean counters. “Don’t go looking to him for stability.”

In the silence following that, Rap clears her throat noisily. Clasping her hands together she steps into the middle of the room and smiles. It’s maybe closer to a rictus than a real smile, but she gets points for trying.

“How about we take a breather and grab something drink. Anna, you have any more of that tea?” 

Looking puzzled, Anna nods.

“Good. Great. Then we can all have a sit down,” Rap goes on, patting the arm of one of the settees as though tempting them to curl right up, “and Hannah can explain exactly what she knows about Michael’s plan to get Cassiel back. And what it is she’s meant to be reporting.”

“I can tell you that, now,” Hannah says. If she thinks speaking up without hesitation will get her back on Dean’s trust list, she’s wrong, but she certainly looks sincere. “Michael is sure these tattoos are being created by Cassiel, that he’s working on something powerful. And if he’s reaching out to potential new vessels, vessels not in any line existing before this, then he’s still able to touch the surface of the world. He hasn’t sunk entirely into the magma and rock of the world.”

“Wonderful,” Dean says. “So, Cas’ little art project shows he’s not brain-dead? That it? How does that help?”

Though it does. It helps by proving Cas is still in there, in some form, as more than some giant power-cell hiding in the dirt.

“The tattoos have been written by Cassiel,” Hannah says, as though that should be enough of a clue. When no-one reacts, she goes on. “Writing of this sort, it isn’t just a mark. It’s deeper. Each tattoo is a link to Cassiel.”

“Like, a conduit?” Sam asks. He sounds like he’s working something out. 

“Yes,” Hannah agrees. She sounds relieved. Probably not looking forwards to explaining it all to dumb humans. “One end of a conduit, at least. We need to find a way to use to to communicate with him, to bring him forth.”

She turns to Harvey, and Dean has seen that look of apology before, on the face of everyone with even a shred of conscience who’s asked too much of someone who shouldn’t have to give it.

“We need to try it with your tattoo, Harvey,” she says. “We need to use you to contact Cassiel.”


	24. Chapter 24

“Yeah, no,” Dean says, despite the twinge in his gut at denying any chance of talking to Cas. “You leave Harvey out of this.”

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Hannah says, glancing in his direction, and fuck, but the angel has an intense gaze. It’s not like Cas’, not really, but it’s warm and earnest and deep in a way Cas’ can be. It’s hard to think Hannah’s really siding with Michael. “I have my orders.”

“Time was, you were giving the orders,” Dean says, and he sees Hannah track him as he steps partly in front of Harvey. If nothing else, it makes his intentions clear. “What made you roll over for Michael? Thought you were finally in Cas’ camp.”

“It can’t be a case of ‘camps’, Dean,” Hannah says. If only Hannah went Cas’ route and turned her back on Heaven, took up with Sam and Dean, they could get anyone to believe anything with that expression. “It’s all this thought of camps and sides that has decimated Heaven.”

“Pretty sure your current master trying to use the Earth for his sibling smack-down is what set this all off,” Dean corrects her, and he hears Sam agree. “I get it, I do. You want your world back on track. You want it to make sense again. And it’s no fun having all that weight on your shoulders. But Michael? Fuck, Hannah, you might as well hand him a hammer and tell him to smash the place to pieces. You really think this will fix anything?”

Hannah doesn’t answer. Those eyes of hers look about ready to spill tears, but Dean isn’t sure he can trust that. They gave Michael over to Hannah because they thought that was the safe thing to do, the right thing, and now Michael’s back on the chess-board. 

“You know what? I’ve had it with angels,” Dean says. “I’d say I’ve only ever been able to trust one of you bastards, but even he lied to me. Maybe it’s time we just stopped pretending you have anything about you we can count on.”

He turns away, ready to storm out, only to see Anna’s face. She looks distraught.

“What?” Dean asks. “You saying I’m wrong? Because I remember you attacking my mom.”

Anna swallows, a gesture far too human for someone who still claims to be an angel, and Dean is reminded yet again that Anna walked the path ahead of Cas, in many ways.

“Don’t leave, Dean,” Anna says. “Please. I think…I think you aren’t quite hearing what Hannah is saying.”

“Hannah’s saying we have to use Harvey as some phone-line to get a hold of Cas, who’s burrowed his way into the mud and taken up calligraphy on human flesh as his new hobby. She’s saying she’s screwed us over and let Michael clip a leash on her collar. What’s not to hear?” 

Even Sam shoots Dean a look that says he’s being a dick, but screw it. There are times when Dean reaches his limit. It isn’t always something he knows is coming. One second he’s rolling with it, dealing with alpha monsters and leviathan and new gods and whatever other shit gets thrown his way, and then next he feels something snap inside him, feels the need to yell and storm and crawl into a bottle. 

“You talk about us having collars, Dean,” Anna says, “but you don’t follow the thought through to its logical conclusion. Do you blame a dog for doing as its master tells it? For feeling the need for a master, when its been bred and trained to want one?”

“You’re comparing yourself to a dog, now?” Dean asks. “Your whole species? You got any idea what that sounds like?”

“Yes,” Anna says. “Do you? Have you really stopped and thought about it? I am horrified that Michael is in charge again, but I can understand the appeal, to most angels, to have an archangel in power. Wasn’t there a time when you would have welcomed your father back, Dean? Even knowing how he would treat you? Just to have him back in charge? Isn’t there a part of you that would welcome that, still?”

Is there? Dean’s so used to being in charge now, he’d have no space for John Winchester to turn up and order him around. Yeah, sure, he’d love to see his dad, but… But an image of John’s face, burning disappointment clear as day, rises in Dean’s mind. It feels recent, John backed by the branches of trees, a memory Dean knows isn’t real. Desperation, shame, embarrassment…they trail after the memory. 

“My dad’s gone,” Dean says, hoping the faint tremor in his voice isn’t noticeable to anyone. “Sam and me, we’ve moved on from needing daddy to boss us around. What is it about you angels that stops you doing the same?”

“That’s a good question,” Sam says. He moves, drawing Anna’s attention from Dean. It breaks the tension, let’s Dean breathe again, let’s him focus on pushing those sense-memories of his dad away. “You said we’re not listening to Hannah properly. What do you mean?”

Anna sighs and, for some reason, shares a look with Rap. Rap nods firmly and disappears out of the room. 

“Sit,” Anna says. “At the very least, we can pretend to be civil. Believe it or not, Sam, Dean, I still believe we may all be on the same side, here.”

Dean scoffs at that, but he follows Sam’s lead and ends up sitting across from Hannah. He refuses to look at her. 

“Hannah,” Anna says after a longer pause than is comfortable. “Can you explain why you set Michael free?”

Dean has to hand it to Anna. She is at least up to asking tough questions, and she does it with a calm he doesn’t know he could manage. 

“Heaven voted,” she says. “They voted to free Michael.”

“Heaven did,” Sam says, sitting forward on the settee, his gaze intent. “But not you?”

Dean looks up in time to catch the look cross Hannah’s face, fleeting and pained. Determined. 

“You let him go even though you didn’t want to,” he says, the knowledge certain as he stares at her. “You… Do you agree with what he’s doing? You don’t, do you?”

It’s only all those years of learning to read Cas that let him see it, but he’s sure he’s right. Cas might have developed a more open expression, as least compared to what he used to have, but Dean hasn’t lost the skill of tracing the subtle shifts. Hannah is not on board with Michael’s plan. Not willingly.

“If you don’t agree, why are you lead henchman?” Dean asks. 

He hears Rap’s footsteps and sees her lean down, pressing a mug into Hannah’s hands. Hannah takes it with a look of confusion. Moments later, Rap gives a mug to Sam, then Harvey. When Dean takes his, mostly on instinct, he spares a frustrated thought for why Anna would want Rap to make drinks. This isn’t a fucking tea-party.

“I’m not a henchman,” Hannah says, and her voice is stiff. “I am an angel, and even with the seraphs gone-”

“What? Wait, the seraphs are gone?” Sam breaks in. “All of them?”

Dean remembers listening to Cas, one of those times the guy had turned up after taking Sam’s pain, before they’d been blown to Purgatory, and when he’d been rambling on about ranks upon ranks of seraphs, shining and pure, as though he could see them right before him then. To hear Cas tell it, there were thousands. Maybe more. It could be hard to get a real grasp of angelic perspective, from what Dean knew. And he remembers, clear as anything, Cas saying he was a seraph. 

“They can’t all be gone,” Dean says. “They’re one of the main ranks of the Host. Cas is one.”

Of course, Cas isn’t a seraph, it turns out. Dean keeps forgetting that. That creature of tentacles and wings and eyes is hard to overlay on the image he’s had of Cas for years. 

“Cassiel…” Hannah pauses, frowns, and starts again, those large brown eyes of hers almost liquid with some emotion Dean can’t place. “Castiel is an archangel. If he’s that anymore. No-one knows for certain what taking on all of the potential of the Darkness will have done to him, but Michael seems confident that with Castiel’s help he can return Heaven to what it used to be. Dean, Sam, the fighting with Lucifer, the civil war, Castiel’s reign after destroying Raphael, all of these have devastated the ranks of the Host. Seraphs most of all. The few left after that, those from Castiel’s old Garrison and others who backed him in the war, they nearly all died at the… The Leviathan consumed them. Some ran, some hid, but after we fell from Heaven…” She stops, shakes her head. This is clearly not easy for her to say. “There are no seraphs left in the Host now. But Michael has said he can replace them.”

There’s a light in her eyes that Dean wishes not to see. It’s the light of someone with no hope, given the promise that hope can exist again. Even if Hannah is against the details of Michael’s plan, he can see why seeing her home, her people, restored is something she can’t just shrug off. And it looks like Hannah has had little more success teaching angels about freedom than Cas had. They’ve just chosen to go right back to the guy who kept them on tight leashes. 

Dean wonders if he would go back to John, if John turned up right now. 

“And how exactly do you use me to get to Castiel?” Harvey asks, his calm lacking the warm spark Dean’s already got used to. “Will it hurt?”

“Harvey-” Dean starts, but Harvey’s hand on his thigh cuts him off.

“Do I really have a way out of this?” he asks.

“Yes,” Dean says. “Yes, you fucking do. I avoided being Michael’s people-suit. You can avoid this.”

From the texture of Harvey’s silence, Dean can tell he’s not convinced. Well, screw that. Harvey’s already in enough danger, and no way is Dean letting him get any more caught up in this than he is. He’s only known the guy a few days, sure, and this thing between them is too new to really be called love, but he’s got the shape of the way things could go, and Harvey had it right when he said it could be something real. Dean isn’t sure he can do that, but he isn’t letting Heaven be the ones to stop him.

In the absence of a winning argument springing straight to his mind, he takes a sip of the tea. It’s spicy and floral and he really isn’t sure he likes it, with some kind of fruit taste under it all. It makes him think of decay. 

“Drink it,” Anna says, even though she doesn’t seem to be looking at him. “It’s good for you.”

Dean rolls his eyes and downs the liquid, pulling a face and making no secret of the fact he hasn’t enjoyed it. 

“Don’t be a kid, Dean,” Sam says, and drinks his own tea as though proving a point. 

Dean doesn’t miss the grimace Sam tries to hide. 

“If you do this,” Harvey goes on, his fingers pressing into the meat of Dean’s leg, “and get in touch with Castiel, what will that mean?”

“We don’t know,” Hannah admits, though she sounds frustrated, as far as Hannah ever does. “Perhaps we can speak to him, perhaps we can just get a sense of him. Maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to bring him back. And in answer to your other question, Michael knows how to call to Castiel through you, or another of the True Vessels. If you won’t do this, you have only to wait until the next vessel arrives.”

“And have them go through it instead of me?”

And that, right there, makes Dean wish he had the luxury of letting Harvey be in his life for longer. The guy is clearly just as stupid when it comes to throwing himself away for others as anyone who qualifies to be in Dean’s heart. Sure, he’s not got himself killed to save the world, but he’s already showing signs he won’t let someone fight in his place. 

“Harvey-” Dean tries again, but stops when Harvey holds up his hand.

“Don’t. Just…don’t. We can’t do anything until Michael gets back?” he asks, the question again directed at Hannah.

“No. No, I don’t know how. I think it’s something only an archangel can do.”

Dean’s certain there’s an element of regret at that, as though Hannah really has learned something from Cas, and would rather do this herself.

Shaking his head, Dean scrubs a hand over his face. This is draining, all this talk of vessels and Heaven, when he’d hoped he was done with them. He blinks to clear some of the tiredness from his eyes. 

“So, what? We just sit around and wait for Michael to come back? I can’t do that,” Dean says.

Sam yawns, and looks surprised. Perhaps Rap didn’t get him to sleep as well as Dean had thought she might. Speaking of, he could have done with more himself. And it’s warmer in here than he thought. 

“You have tasks to complete in the meantime, Dean,” Anna says. Her voice has an echo to it. 

This time, Dean yawns, his jar cracking near open, and he hears Harvey join him. Sam makes a faint noise and Dean hears his cup clatter to the coffee table.

“What did you put in this?” he hears Sam ask, but he’s starting to go a little fuzzy around the edges.

“Don’t fight it,” Anna says. “And I’m sorry, but he was very specific. No warning. No open talk. Just go with it.”

Dean wants to ask her what she means, but sleep has his eyes weighing heavy in his head, and Harvey is right next to him, and so warm and perfect to lean against…

He doesn’t know whether he drops the cup or not, but it doesn’t matter. He slides from alert anger to oblivion with barely a struggle, Harvey’s hand still on his thigh.

When he opens his eyes, he’s in Charlie’s forest and Harvey is beside him, with Sam just beyond. All three of them are sitting with their backs to a sloping boulder, and Dean finds Harvey still has his hand on Dean. He realizes it just as he makes out a figure standing in the middle of the clearing, warm sunlight gilding his hair, his eyes fixed on Dean.

“Cas.”


	25. Chapter 25

Cas. 

Harvey’s hand on Dean’s thigh is a brand, almost enough to take his attention from the man in front of him. Well, angel. Only…

“What happened to the tentacles?” Dean asks.

The hair is just as Dean remembers, wilder than the clothing suggests it should be, and that beige coat is back. Not the one Cas turned up in after taking another angel’s Grace. It’s the original. Cas looks like Cas, for the first time in what feels like forever. 

Beside him, he feels Harvey shift, flattening his palm against Dean’s leg. Dean isn’t sure if he’s seeking reassurance or trying to offer it. He wants to cover Harvey’s hand, but Cas is staring right at Dean and it pins him in place, unmoving. 

“Cas?” Sam says, disbelief of a sort the Winchesters should have ditched a long while back filling his voice.

Harvey’s hand jolts and disappears from Dean’s thigh. 

“Cas, what’s going on? Where are we?” Sam asks. 

As Dean stares back at Cas, he hears Sam climbing to his feet, the movements unsteady. If Sam feels anything like Dean does, dizzy and disorientated and distant, it’ll be hell to stand. Dean doesn’t think he can stand at all. He isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to. That’s Cas. That’s his Cas, rumpled and stoic and staring. 

“Cas,” he manages, feeling the quirk of his own lips but not having any idea why they’re doing that. He doesn’t feel amused, or flirtatious. He feels numb. 

“Dean,” Cas says, inclining his head. 

And it hits Dean, all at once, that he hasn’t seen Cas in his right mind, not really, not when Dean’s been truly himself, for months. Years? He doesn’t know, can’t work it out. But that’s Cas, all right, right there in front of him, holding his gaze. 

“This is Castiel?” Harvey asks, voice careful. 

Dean hears him shift and thinks he should reach out to him, but… 

“Seriously,” Sam says, “what is going on? Are we dead? Are we all dead? Did Anna have Rap poison us?”

“She’d never poison me,” Harvey says, not sounding entirely focused. “You, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, she can be pretty ruthless when she has to be. You should see her with the neighbours when they don’t keep the noise down, but I don’t think she’d murder us with tea.”

Harvey’s rambling. Dean can hear the nervous thrum under his words. He sees Cas turn his head and fix Harvey with a piercing look, one of those Cas specials, where it seems like he’s looking right through into your soul. 

“You’re Lucifer’s True Vessel,” Cas says without inflection. It’s too much a throw back to what Cas used to be like, back before Dean and rebellion. “Why would Anna send you here?”

“She said they needed me to talk to you,” Harvey offers when no-one else responds. He’s trying to be brave. Dean can tell. 

“Risky,” Cas says. “And that method does not require you to be here. Besides,” he adds, turning to glance at Sam and then at Dean again, “that doesn’t explain why the two of you are involved.”

“Where’s here?” Sam asks.

But Dean knows. Thinks he knows.

“Cas,” he says, and has to stop and swallow before trying again. “Cas, are we in the veil?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Cas says. “How did you know?”

With a problem to focus on, Dean manages to throw off the shock at seeing Cas. His legs are less steady than he’d like, but he makes it to his feet and, dropping his eyes from Cas’, reaches down to pull Harvey up. For a moment, he grips onto the other man, but his fingers skitter away under the weight of Cas’ presence. 

“I’ve seen Charlie here,” Dean says. “Spoken to her. A few times. It didn’t feel like Heaven, but it’s not Earth, right? And it’s not Hell or Purgatory.”

It says something about Dean that he knows each of those places. It says something about Sam that he listens without argument or exclamation. Dean’s not sure why Harvey’s so quiet. Confusion, perhaps. Shock. 

“You shouldn’t have been here,” Cas says, frowning. He sounds displeased, even irritated. “Even with the bleed, you shouldn’t have been pulled here.”

“The bleed?” Sam asks, his voice quirking up at the end. His brain must already be working on the clues, piecing bits together to come up with some picture. That’s Sam, builder of evidence and logic.

Dean’s waiting for enough of a connection to what’s going on to make the leap to understanding. 

“Yes,” Cas looks at them in turn, a lingering look that suggests the wheels in that alien mind of his are turning in their strange circles. 

Dean waits, but that seems to be all they’re getting. Familiar irritation bubbles up, shot through with affection.

“Little more than that would be a help, Cas,” he says. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Cas says, whatever equations he has in his head looping back to that conclusion. 

He shifts on his feet, and for a moment Dean can see those wings behind him, arcing up in an inky spill across the sky. They’re dotted with those constellations Dean knows are eyes, each one lit and glowing. Whatever Cas is here, he’s whole. Then the image is gone, and it’s just human-looking Cas standing there, looking pinched and worried.

“Well, we’re here, now,” Dean tries. “Tell us what’s going on.”

“The Darkness has…has led to unforeseen consequences. Unforeseen possibilities.” 

Cas sounds uneasy, now. It’s better than robotic. Dean thinks it is. 

“Such as?” Dean asks, dipping his head to try and catch Cas’ gaze properly. It’s always been a short-cut to the angel’s mind, to his willingness to listen or to speak. “Because we noticed the new vessels. And the tattoos. That was you, right?”

“Yes,” Cas says. “It didn’t seem…prudent to leave new True Vessels open for habitation.”

“Hey!” Harvey breaks in, but it sounds like he thinks he should be protesting more than something he really feels. “I’m not a house for sale.”

“You are,” Cas says, turning to look at him again. “In a sense, you are. And all I’ve been able to do is block each Arch-angel from its own True Vessel.”

“So…what? You saying you could get inside Harvey?”

And, fuck, but that sounds wrong. Kind of hot, and Dean will go to Hell again no doubt, because he just knows he’s going to think about that later, but wrong.

“Yes,” Cas says, with not so much as a flicker on his face to say he knows what else Dean’s picturing besides angelic possession. “In theory, any of us could.”

“Cas,” Sam says, and he’s speaking a bit like he sometimes speaks to victims of trauma, as though Cas isn’t fully aware of something he should be and Sam’s going to have to break it to him. “You do remember, right? There’s only you and Michael left. Lucifer’s in the Cage still, and the other Arch-angels…they’re dead, Cas. You remember that, right?”

Cas stares at Sam for long enough that Dean’s starting to wonder if Cas has forgotten that. Who knows what might have happened to his mind with everything that’s gone on? If Cas were human, he’d have PTSD by now, no question. Dean wonders what that would look like in an angel. 

“No,” Cas says, and Dean opens his mouth to tell Cas what he’s clearly forgotten or got confused. Cas beats him to the next words. “Some of them died, yes. Most of them. But no Arch-angel is ever truly dead. Not entirely. One thing the Darkness has done is break down barriers, give potential even where we might not want it. The Veil, as you call it, is a transition point. True liminal space. It is the Threshold-plane, through which all energies must pass as they shift from one stage to the next. And the Darkness has altered the flow.”

“Hang on,” Sam says. “Are you… Are you saying the dead can travel the other way? That they can come back? Wait. Is that what happened with Anna?”

“Cas, are you saying Raphael and the rest are coming back?” Dean adds. 

Cas isn’t looking at any of them when he answers. He’s looking behind them, and Dean becomes horribly aware that he can hear the sound of footsteps, many of them, moving through the forest at his back.

“Yes,” Cas says. “I’m saying there is a chance they are coming back. I am saying the Threshold can be crossed in reverse. The Dead are coming back.”


	26. Chapter 26

Dean turns to face the direction Cas is staring in, but all he sees are trees. Next to him, he hears Harvey move, sees him out of the corner of his eye. The guy’s holding up well, considering. Doesn’t mean he’s totally fine. 

“You doing okay?” Dean asks, glancing at his… Well, at his lover, or boyfriend or whatever the fuck Harvey is. It’s suddenly seeming much more important that he works that out, now Cas is standing right behind him. 

Harvey nods. It’s a tight, short movement. 

“I’m coping,” he says. “This sort of thing happen to you all the time?”

“More often than I’d like,” Dean agrees. 

“Is that really the dead walking right at us?” Harvey asks next.

Dean finds he has no answer. He isn’t even sure what he wants the answer to be. There are so many of the dead he’d want to see again, but at least as many others he doesn’t. Too many of the dead have been sent past the Veil by Dean, not always on purpose, and those are the worst of all. His dad, Jess, Jo, Ellen, Bobby and Kevin. Charlie. Just some of the names, stretching out over the years, which have ended up on gravestones and in eulogies because of what Dean did or didn’t do. Sometimes, just existing seems to send people he loves to their deaths. 

“Wouldn’t rule it out,” Dean says. 

Charlie, in his dreams, seemed so real. And this is the same forest, he’s sure of it. He really was speaking to Charlie. Charlie, who said she was holding off reinforcements. There was a larger force on its way to Dean. 

“Cas,” he calls over his shoulder, half twisting until he can see the angel standing with his hands in his pockets, his head slightly tilted to the side. “What the fuck is heading at us? We gonna need to fight?”

“I believe so,” Cas says, as though it’s not an issue. “Though I doubt you can win.”

Dean bites back a curse, reminding himself that Cas, for all his stubbornness and badass fighting, is still the guy who advised they face the end of the world by getting stinking drunk. He isn’t always the most positive about a fight he thinks he can’t win. Of course, he’s also been known to slaughter his way out of torture chambers and through his own kind when he thinks Dean needs him. Dean might not have been there when Cas escaped his various reunions with other angels, but he’s heard enough to get the picture. 

Cas will do anything to keep Dean safe, and Dean isn’t above using it.

“Stay here,” he orders Harvey. “Sammy, you keep an eye on him.”

With little hope either one of them will listen, but needing to pretend they will, he takes off, right into the trees. Whatever’s coming, he’ll face it. 

“Dean!” he hears Harvey call, but then he’s in amongst the foliage, the low branches and high bushes snapping in his face as he speeds up. Dean’s fast, he knows that, faster than Sam and likely faster than Harvey. Hell, Dean once outran a horde of Croats. And all that time in the forests of Purgatory has to count for something. 

All he can think, as he ducks and runs and weaves, is that he can’t let whatever’s coming get to Harvey and Sam before it gets to Dean. He can’t keep them safe if he doesn’t know what’s coming. A tiny hitch in his thoughts reminds him he’s not meant to be protecting Sam, not anymore. It’s part of the promises they’ve made, but it’s hard to shed so many years of habit. 

Besides, he’s made no promises about Harvey. 

He runs smack into something solid and unmoving.

“Dean.”

He’s pressed right up against Cas, the force of his movement and suddenness of Cas’ appearance meaning Dean’s now touching Cas from thigh to chest, Cas’ hands bracing Dean’s shoulders.

“Cas,” he manages, the air knocked out of him. 

He should take a step back. He should. He’s maybe with Harvey and Cas was…well, sort of dead and sort of not and he hasn’t really been Cas for a long time now, and Dean hasn’t ever discussed this with him and now is so not the time, with possibly an army of the dead heading right for them, and… And this is Cas. He thought he’d lost him, and Cas is right here. 

Dean surges forwards, his hands snaking up to take hold of the angel’s face, and fits his lips to Cas’.


	27. Chapter 27

Cas’ lips are dry and warm, plush and inviting and… And unmoving.

Stilling, Dean pulls away, seeking out Cas’ eyes but not able to force himself to let go of Cas’ face. His fingers curl, in danger of digging in to the angel’s flesh.

“Cas? Is… Do you…?”

Cas’ eyes are wide. As Dean watches, his lips part, just a fraction of an inch, and the guy seems to freeze.

“Cas, buddy, tell me I didn’t just screw up, here,” Dean says, something desperate pulsing in his chest, in his throat.

All those years of yearning, of longing, of slowly admitting to himself that he felt more for Cas, even if he couldn’t put it into words inside his own head. And now, with Harvey, he’s finally out to Sam and feels he can take this step, and Cas looks like Dean’s just hit him over the head with a pole. 

“Cas?” he tries again.

“Dean,” Cas says. Breathes. 

The wonder in his own name is unnerving, but it’s so totally Cas that it brings a burst of affection bubbling up in Dean’s chest. Before he has time to process it, Cas is the one who closes the gap, his hands flexing on Dean’s shoulders and settling into a firmer grip, as though Cas is afraid this is all some joke and Dean will slip away.

Dean feels Cas’ lips move and closes his eyes, parting his own lips when he feels the tip of Cas’ tongue against them. It quickly grows heated, Cas nipping at Dean’s lower lip and sliding one hand up to the back of Dean’s head, more forceful and commanding than Dean expected him to be. 

Then again, he watched him kiss Meg once, watched him lift and push her against a wall. Maybe this isn’t so surprising.

When Cas moves his other hand from Dean’s shoulder to his back, pressing low down on Dean’s spine and pulling their hips together, Dean gasps. He can’t even hate himself for it. Cas is hard against Dean. This is… This is more than they have time for in the middle of a forest in the land of the sort-of dead.

“Cas,” he says, as he lets go of Cas’ face and pushes against his chest. 

“You don’t want to?” Cas asks. He sounds hurt. Dazed, and hurt. 

“What? Fuck, no. I mean, yes. I want to. God, Cas, I want to.”

He finally gets himself together enough to take in Cas again, and sees flushed cheeks and heavy breathing. It’s almost too much, seeing how he’s affected the angel. There’s something like apprehension on Cas’ face, though, and that has Dean rushing to reassure him.

“Cas, I can safely say I’ve never wanted anyone more. All right? If things were different, I’d be all for you pushing me up against that tree right now.” And he doesn’t pause to worry about the fact he’s put himself in the role of the one being pushed. “Hell, I’d have you out of those clothes already.” Cas flushes a little more at that and Dean sees a smile tug at the corner of the angel’s mouth. “But you said it yourself. The dead are coming back. This might not be the best time.”

At that, Cas’ eyes narrow and he licks his lips, resolve settling on his features and he visibly pulls himself back from this moment Dean launched them into.

“Yes. Yes, you’re right, of course. We should attend to the matter at hand.”

“How about you start by telling me what the matter at hand really is?” Dean suggests, because he’s still unclear on why Cas is here and what he really means by the dead coming back. 

“It…” Cas pauses, grimaces, as though something tastes bad, and shakes his head. “I don’t really know. Not entirely.”

Dean can’t believe what he’s hearing. 

“You’re kidding me,” he says. “Everyone keeps telling me you’re the most powered up angel, that the Darkness has fused with you and made you into something vast and unknowable, and you don’t know what’s going on?”

The look Cas gives him them has a thread of amused affection in it, almost buried under the frustration.

“I have always been vast and unknowable, in human terms,” Cas points out. “But… Dean, I’m not fused with the Darkness. Not this part of me.”

Which…what?

“What?” Dean takes a step back, looking Cas up and down. “What do you mean? This part of you? How many parts are there?”

“The Darkness is potential so great that it can bring the impossible into being,” Cas says. “In this case, it can split an angel who already feels like he is many into…well…many. I don’t really know what all of the other parts of me are doing.”

“And which part of you did I just kiss?” Dean asks.

Cas speaks simply, as though this isn’t any stranger than anything else they’ve been through. 

“The part which pulled you from Hell and stood by your side,” he says. “The part which loves you.”

Love. Okay. It takes Dean a moment to get his brain started back up.

“And the other parts?”

Cas shakes his head again.

“I don’t know for certain. It is possible for my Grace to split, or for my true-form to, but it may be into multitudes or it may be there are only two parts. My archangel self is greater, stronger, than the version of me you have known. Even when I held the souls,” and Cas’ voice grows reluctant. He always hates speaking about this, Dean knows. “Even then, I was full of power, but I was still not so huge or ancient as my original self. And then I feel a good portion of my Grace is missing, even the Grace I held as a seraph before I met you… Dean, I really can’t tell. I just know that this part of me, the part you call ‘Cas’, is stuck in the Veil.”

“Stuck? What do you mean, stuck?” 

Dean feels icy dread creep into his spine, closing around his ribcage as he edges to an understanding he doesn’t want.

Cas’ eyes take on a look of sympathy, of concern, and Dean almost tells him to keep quiet. Almost.

“Dean,” Cas says. “This part of me, the one you have known, couldn’t withstand all that happened since the release of the Darkness. This part of me is effectively dead.”


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very short chapter before the plot picks up again. Sorry, but my brain isn't working in huge chunks atm.

Dean knows he’s staring, open-mouthed, but what does Cas expect? 

“Dead?” he manages at last. “You’re telling me after everything we’ve gone through, my first kiss with you is when you’re fucking dead?”

“Our timing could be better,” Cas sighs. 

“You think?”

Dean runs a hand through his hair, not that it’s really long enough. Still, he needs to be moving, to be working this out. 

“How do we get you undead?” he asks. “Not dead. How do we get you back alive? Come on, Cas. You’ve come back nearly as many times as me and Sam have. There’s gotta be a way.”

“I don’t think so,” Cas says. “Not this time. The other times, I wasn’t dead for long enough to wake up here. This time, I’ve been here for… I don’t know how long, but long enough to understand where I am. And long enough to work out there’s something not right.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “You said the dead are coming back. If you’re dead, then you can come back.”

“I wish it were that easy,” Cas says. 

“We’ll make it that easy.” Dean knows he’s close to shouting at Cas, and that’s all kinds of fucked up, like it usually is. His anger is fear. He knows that, too. All he wants to do is pull Cas close and kiss him again. Instead, he feels how close he is to losing it and yelling. “Don’t you give up on me. This is not Purgatory. You hear me?”

Cas holds his gaze, the blue of those eyes even more intense than Dean remembers, before lowering his eyes.

“Yes,” Cas says. “I hear you.”

Dean wishes he could believe that means Cas will listen to him. The angel’s one of the most self-sacrificing bastards Dean’s ever met, and what makes it more gut-wrenching is that he never acts like it’s a sacrifice. Cas seems to think his own life just isn’t worth that much, that he isn’t worth that much, and Dean’s spent some time over the last six months thinking of all the ways he’s only added to that view. 

“You are getting out of here and coming back with me,” Dean says, stepping forwards and getting hold of Cas’ shoulder, just in case that imprints the words on his stubborn angel-brain any better. “Don’t you dare leave me now, Cas. Not when you’ve just said the whole love thing.” Those words are hard to get out. “You and me? We’re sticking together.”

If anything gets Cas to work on a way back to the land of the living, it’ll be thinking that failing to do it will harm Dean. Dean isn’t above using that, not if it gets Cas to save himself.

“The rest of me is still alive.”

“Yeah? How sure are you about that?” Dean tries to catch Cas’ eye, but the angel has his gaze firmly lowered. “Besides, I don’t want the rest of you. I want this bit. I want my Cas.”

Cas looks up then, his eyes wide. Everything around them seems to freeze.

“Your Cas?” he asks, almost a whisper, like he’s afraid Dean will take the words back. 

Fuck. That… Dean might be more open, might have let himself relax about this whole thing more, but that doesn’t mean he’s turned into someone else. Sappy stuff is still outside his wheelhouse. He gives himself time to take a breath or two, his fingers tightening on Cas’ shoulder. Diving head-first into a nest of vamps is easier than this.

“Yeah. Mine,” Dean says. “If you want.”

“Yes.” Cas says that one word as though it’s as life-changing as giving consent to being a vessel. 

It shakes something loose in Dean, but he doesn’t have time to stop and work out what. And he doesn’t know why whatever it is brings tears dangerously close to his eyes.

“All right then,” he says. “Then you need to understand that I don’t leave what’s mine behind. If we’re gonna do this, you need to fight your way back to me. Now, do you hear me? Really hear me?”

This time, when Cas nods, Dean believes it.


	29. Chapter 29

Dean’s been ignoring the tramp of feet in the background, but it’s getting louder, and with Cas’ agreement finally feeling real he can force his brain back to the case. 

“They won’t be long,” Cas says. He sounds resigned. “You should leave.”

“What did we just get through saying?” Dean asks. “I leave, you leave.”

“That isn’t… Dean, I’m not saying I’m going to stay here forever, but right now you need to keep yourself alive. You don’t understand what’s at stake here. These are not a few ghosts. This is the Veil breaking. Already, some of the dead have made it back to your plane, though I can’t speak for how they’ve manifested once there. Given the power in the Darkness, it could be anything. And returning to the world when it’s infused with my archangel Grace… I just don’t know, Dean. I do know we can’t let any more of them return. We have to stop this. And I need you to be safe.”

Dean takes a moment to let that flow of words wash into him. Damn, but he forgot how much Cas can talk when he wants to. 

“You want me safe?” he asks. “Cas, when am I ever safe?”

“When I’ve got your back.” 

And that’s one of the most definite statements Dean’s ever heard.

He doesn’t have time for more before the march of feet ahead of them is joined by the crash of boots behind. Seconds later, Sam bursts into the clearing, closely followed by Harvey. Both of them look to be breathing heavily. Dean isn’t sure how it’s taken them this long to catch up, but he isn’t going to question it. It’s given him time alone with Cas for the fist time in years, if you count from when they last saw each other without brainwashing and Marks and other crap in the way.

“Dean, you okay? Cas?” Sam sounds wary. 

“We’re fine,” Dean says, letting go of Cas and stepping back. He catches sight of Harvey out of the corner of his eye, an expression on his face Dean doesn’t want to think about too closely. “We’ve got a pack of zombies to stop, but we’re fine.”

“Not zombies,” Cas says, as though Dean is serious about that. “But we do need to prevent these souls from returning to Earth. Once there, they could become anything.”

That niggles at the back of Dean’s mind, but he pushes it aside for now. There are more urgent things to focus on. 

“How do we stop them?” he asks. 

“I don’t know,” Cas says. “In theory, I could absorb them-”

“No!” Dean and Sam snap as one, and Cas stops with his mouth open and blinks.

“All right,” he says. “I was going to say that would be unwise. I’m not at full strength. In all honesty, I’m amazed this form is holding.”

“What?” Dean asks. 

Cas waves a hand at him as though that statement is unimportant and looks up, like there’ll be any kind of answer in the sky. 

“We could try appealing to them, but I doubt the ones marching toward us will listen. The more reasonable souls have already banded together, from what I’ve been told. I could smite some, or we could create a barrier-”

“Barrier,” Dean says. “How do we do that?”

“Quickly,” Cas says. “And you need to understand, the barrier I could create in such a short time would be destructive to the souls. They would burn up entirely. I would prefer not to annihilate anyone unless we must.”

“You just said we have to stop them,” Dean says, “so build your barrier and if they won’t listen to a warning, that’s on them. We’ll tell them the risks if they try to cross.”

Cas nods, but he doesn’t look especially happy about it. 

“Very well,” he says. “You may want to step back. And…” He stops, his gaze flickering away from Dean and back. He hunches slightly into himself. “And you may want to keep a look-out for the approaching souls.”

Cas isn’t even subtle. He doesn’t like the idea of Dean seeing whatever is about to happen. Dean opens his mouth to remind Cas of all the terrible things he’s already seen, more than he’s happy with having to do with Cas, but the memory of Cas flinching under Dean’s hands stops him. He doesn’t want to be the cause for that look on Cas anymore, whether it’s his hands or his words doing the harm. He shuts his mouth and nods.

He catches Sam’s eye as he turns away, and Sam nods. Cas hasn’t banned Sam from watching, and Sam will let Dean know if he needs to turn back. 

Dean’s grateful when he feels Harvey stop next to him, his hand brushing the back of Dean’s, but the way his cheeks feel flushed isn’t just the attraction he feels when he’s near the guy. He almost moves aside, the sense-memory of Cas’ lips fresh and real, but that wouldn’t be fair to Harvey. And now is not the time to get caught up in thinking about this. 

The tree-line is staggered, thick with undergrowth, and Dean shifts his stance as he picks up how much louder the sound of feet has gotten. They’re almost here. 

A ripping sound behind him almost has him turning, the muscles in his back twitching as he stops himself. He doesn’t know what could be worse than the tentacles and wings he saw the last time Cas was on the Earth. The tentacles, anyway. The wings were… Well, they were something.

“Fuck,” he hears Sam say, more a breathless utterance than a firm word. 

A high-pitched whine blots out anything else, but when Dean tries to turn he feels Harvey’s fingers catch at him and he halts. Right. Not looking. Except… 

What if Cas doesn’t want him to look because he’s doing some damn-fool thing that’ll get him killed, and he’s worried Dean will stop him? Well, more killed than he already is. Cas is too self-sacrificing to be allowed to just go about his way without Dean keeping an eye out.

The whine increases, climbing the scale until Dean feels his bones vibrate inside his skin. 

“Cas?” he yells? “Cas?”

He can’t even hear himself. 

It’s no good. He can’t stand here with his back to Cas when he’s no idea what the guy’s doing to himself now. He has to look, to at least bear witness, and to stop him if he tries to explode himself into this barrier, whatever it’s going to be.

Slipping from Harvey’s grasp, Dean spins, his eyes widening as his brain struggles to take in what he’s seeing. Some part of it’s horribly familiar: wings, tentacles, more galaxy eyes than ever, only this time they’re all open, and they’re blazing. The shadowy suggestions of heads are stronger, almost strong enough to make out, and the eyes on each one burn brighter even than the ones on Cas’ many limbs. 

But that’s not the strangest part.

Light streams from Cas. Not the blue-glow of leaking Grace, though he’s lit up with that. No. These are thick ribbons of golden light, snaking out from all over Cas’ body, twisting and winding and weaving together until they form a sheet across the space. Dean can’t see where it ends, his eyes tracking it up and up until it merges with the sky above.

When Cas said he could make a barrier, he meant from himself.

Dean’s torn, the urge to lunge forward and shake Cas until he stops only just losing to the knowledge Cas has said this needs to be done, and the fact that Cas promised not to pull some Purgatory level crap here. Cas is coming home with Dean. He is. 

The light burns brighter, Cas’ limbs, human and whatever-the-fuck the other things count as, stretching out, Cas’ lips parting and his human eyes open as wide as Dean’s seen them. It’s all too easy to imagine Cas is being pulled apart. Perhaps that isn’t imagination at all. Perhaps-

The whine cuts off, the light vanishes, and Cas staggers.

Dean’s got hold of him before he has a chance to hit the ground. He lowers Cas to the dirt, supporting him as his head lolls and his arms and legs catch up with being the only limbs Cas has available. Cas stares at nothing, his eyes still catching that starlight his less human eyes carry all the time, and despite the situation Dean can’t help but notice. 

He coughs and adjusts his hold so he can pat Cas’ cheek.#

“Hey. You okay, buddy?” 

Out of the corner of this eye, he sees Harvey crouch on the other side of Cas, hand hovering as though not sure whether it’s okay to touch, and Sam just beyond him, staring in the other direction. 

Cas blinks, refocuses. His gaze latches on to Dean.

“You watched,” he says, the grumble of a frown in his words. 

“So?” Dean asks. “What’s the big deal? Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Even though it was. With Cas, there’s always something new. Still, Cas searches Dean’s eyes with an expression that says he’s trying to work Dean out, like Dean’s the one who sprouts extra body parts at the drop of a hat.

“You don’t like that manifestation of my form,” Cas says, but the words are slow, less certain. 

“Says who?”

“Guys,” Sam breaks in, “we don’t have time for this. We gotta move. You sure that barrier’s going to stop them, Cas?”

“Yes,” Cas says, snapping back to soldier mode and pulling out of Dean’s hold. He does let Dean help him to his feet, Harvey lending a hand on the other side with a look on his face that says he’s still rewriting his grip on reality and won’t be ready with his findings for a while. “It will hold. 

“And this spot right here’ll keep them from getting through?” Dean asks. “This the border?”

“No,” Cas says, and he’s mastered the skill of lacing his words with both fondness and irritation that someone can fail to grasp something so obvious. “You’re thinking in limited dimensions. The barrier is more properly a binding field. It prevents energy which has lost its tether to Earth from returning there. You’ll be fine. Your bodies still live.”

“And what about you?” Dean asks, even as it registers that the marching has broken into the sound of running, and it’s fucking close.

He tugs at Cas, glancing around for cover, but the angel stands his ground and Dean finds himself jarring to a halt. 

“It depends,” Cas says, “on whether I have a strong enough tie to the Earth. He frowns again, staring into Dean’s eyes, and nods. Then he turns his head and does the same to Harvey. “Yes,” he says, drawing the word out as Harvey stares back, clearly still finished with his rewriting but adding yet more data to the project. “Yes, it should work.”

Pulling away from Dean entirely, Cas turns until he’s facing Harvey, reaching to take the guy by both shoulders. Dean opens his mouth to ask what the fuck Cas is doing, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“You already contain some of my Grace,” Cas says, “I regret what some other part of me has done to you, but it provides an opportunity, if you are willing.”

Harvey’s eyes skitter over Cas’ shoulder to Dean, who shakes his head, the trickle of a clue making him feel sick. This wasn’t what he meant when he said Cas has to come back with him. 

“I need a vessel,” Cas says. 

“Cas-” Dean starts, not a clue what he’s intending to go after it. 

But it doesn’t matter. Harvey’s face switches from the distant shock he’s been wearing to determination, and Dean sees his answer too late to do anything about it.

“Yes.”

It isn’t like on Earth. There’s no streaming light pushing its way into Harvey’s mouth. Cas tightens his grip on Harvey and nods, and is gone. 

“What the fuck?” Dean shouts.

The noise of running feet is so loud now that he expects the Dead to break through the foliage at any moment, but he still can’t tear his eyes from what’s in front of him. Harvey straightens, lifts his hand, and flexes his fingers. When he looks up at Dean, the familiar small tug at one corner of his lips is all wrong. It’s the right smile, but it’s on the wrong face.

“I promised you, Dean,” Cas says, in Harvey’s voice, a shade lower than it normally is. “I promised I’d come back with you. And we need to go.”

Cas moves fast, grabbing Sam and setting his hand on Dean’s shoulder as the first yell brings Dean’s head around to the bushes. A woman erupts from cover, the expression on her face one of fury, but before she can reach them Dean feels a tug deep in his belly, and the forest around him disappears.


	30. Chapter 30

Dean erupts into wakefulness, choking on nothing as he jerks upright, his hand flying to his throat. He sees grey and black and red, splotches that swim and shift, the veins in his temple pulsing. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He-

“Dean,” Rap’s voice says as he feels hands on his shoulders. “Just relax. Don’t fight it. You’ll be fine. That’s it. There. Better now?”

He drags in enough air that his vision steadies, clears enough for a dim outline through the haze. Windows, figures: he can’t make out much more. 

“And another breath,” Rap says, rubbing a circle on his upper back. “Give it a minute.”

It takes another four breaths before the red and black dim enough to make out the room properly. The grey lingers at the edges. He’s in Anna’s house, still, but Anna herself is nowhere to be seen. Hannah stares down at Dean, her gaze as clear and calm as it was before, but Dean sees some tension in those brown eyes of hers. Or maybe it’s just he’d got used to her eyes been blue. The blue was better.

“You done staring?” he asks, not quite able to move his hand from his throat. He knows blood and life won’t spill from his throat when he moves his hand. There wasn’t even any suggestion of being injured there. Still, he keeps his fingers pressed tight against his skin, feeling his own pulse in his hand. “What? I got something on my face?”

His smirk must be a sickly thing, but he throws it at her anyway. He has to use the weapons he’s got.

“No,” Hannah says. “You found Castiel.”

He found Castiel. He… 

Dean turns, hand still keeping his throat from breaking, and sees Harvey stretched out on the floor by the settee. His eyes are closed, strands of hair are plastered to his forehead, and he’s sprawled as though his strings have been cut. Dean suppresses the urge to find him a blanket and stroke that hair back.

Because it’s not Harvey. It’s Cas. Or was, in that forest with the Dead attacking. And Dean just kissed Cas, finally, for the first time, but he’s done more with Harvey, and that doesn’t mean anything against the years of knowing Cas, and all they’ve been through. Except…except it sort of does. 

Dean has history with Cas, but he had potential with Harvey, and just because he didn’t mean to pursue it doesn’t stop him feeling jagged and bruised over that being snatched away. He doesn’t think he meant to pursue it. It’s so hard to know, now, with the fact that Cas is still alive and reachable, that’s he’s right there, fresh in his mind. He didn’t know that even a few hours ago, and he can’t say for certain that he was going to walk away from Harvey after this mess of a case was sorted. 

Not to mention, Dean knows a little something about what happens to vessels, including Cas’, and he finds he wants Harvey safe. Even if Dean leaves this town and never sees Harvey again, and the pull in his gut at that is something else he pushes down, he wants to know Harvey is safe.

Blinking, Dean looks away and finds Sam wincing next to him on the couch, his eyes still closed. He’s just beginning to come round. 

“Sam?” he asks, because caring for his brother has been its own kind of struggle, but he’s always known it’s built into him. “Sam, you okay?”

Sam groans and opens his eyes, squinting at Dean.

“Dean? Are we back?”

“Yeah. We’re back. Cas too. I think.”

At that, Sam flounders upright, needing Dean to grab his arm and steady him before he can peer across at Harvey’s body on the floor. He frowns, looking almost as shell-shocked as Dean feels.

“We sure that’s Cas?”

“No.” 

“Yes,” Hannah says at almost the same time, her voice overlapping Dean’s. “Part of him, at least.”

“That’s Cas?” Rap asks, and it hits Dean that they’re talking about her nephew, here. “In Harvey? Cas is in Harvey? What the fuck are you talking about?”

She’s not as calm anymore, but Dean can’t blame her. Seeing Sam as Lucifer, and as Gadreel, was a mindfucking experience he never wanted to repeat, even when with Gadreel it’d been to save Sam’s life. 

“He said yes,” Dean says. “He said yes so Cas could back from the Veil.”

“Harvey said yes to your ex-boyfriend using him to come back from the dead?” Rap asks, sounding like Dean needs to start making more sense soon or he’s in for trouble. “Why? Why did you let him? Did you ask him to do this? What were you thinking? Was one of them not enough for you?”

Dean’s seen people react to loss before, and he’s seen them lash out, but it doesn’t make it much easier to bear.

“I didn’t ask either of them-” he starts, but he has to stop himself. Because he did ask, didn’t he? He ordered. Cas, at least. He has no idea what Harvey was thinking. “Look, Cas knows what being a vessel does to someone. He won’t let it destroy Harvey.”

“He took his old vessel, and from what I can make out that poor bloke ended up pretty destroyed” Rap says. “How’s it different now?”

Because Cas is different now. Dean could sit Rap down and talk her through all the things Cas has been through, turning his back on order, losing his mojo, losing his mind. Hell, Cas has lost almost everything, including his species and free will, at least once, but all it’s done is make the guy gentler, more determined to care. Right up until Crowley dug into his head and pulled out a version of Cas from before human civilization existed, anyway. Dean can’t be totally sure that Cas is right, and only the parts of Cas he’s used to are in there. And even if they are, which parts are they?

“It just is,” he says, because it’s quicker.

And he lets go of Sam long enough to kneel next to Harvey. To Cas. It takes a long moment before he can make himself reach out and take hold of a shoulder.

“Hey,” he says, shaking gently. “Wake up, buddy.”

No names, not until he knows for sure who he’s talking to.

Those eyes open slowly, blinking in the light from the window just as much as Sam’s did. He isn’t sure if it’s hope or fear that shoots through him at the thought that’s a human reaction. 

“Dean?”

The voice is lower, the inflection unique. 

“Cas.”

He hears Rap sob, hears Sam move, and when he tears his eyes away to glance back he sees that Sam has her wrapped in a hug. He hopes it helps her. Right now, he doesn’t have enough space in his heart for much other than his own tangled feelings about the guy, or guys, in front of him.

“Dean, where are we?”

He looks back at Cas, at the familiar frown on the wrong face, and has to fight back a lump in his own throat. 

“Anna’s,” he says, and realizes he has a lot more explaining to do than he thought he did.


	31. Chapter 31

They sit Cas on the settee next to Hannah, who pulls Cas into a hug that makes Dean wonder again exactly how close the two of them got. The lingering looks of fondness when they pull apart are…well. Dean can see something of the original Hannah, of Jimmy’s Cas, on their faces, but he isn’t sure if he’s imagining it. Knowing angels can be in more than one body isn’t the same as seeing it, not when it’s Cas. 

He isn’t sure how much of what he feels for Cas is tied up to Cas as he knew him, in Jimmy Novak’s form. And he isn’t sure how screwed up it makes him.

Rap has left the room, tears thick in her voice as she told them she needed to be somewhere else, and Dean and Sam sit opposite the angels, Dean still feeling groggy from whatever they drank and Sam looking like he feels the same. 

“Anna is really alive?” Cas asks, sounding something like reverent. 

“Yeah. Shock to us, too,” Dean says. “Leastways, she’s back and says she’s part angel, whatever that means. Not sure why you couldn’t come back the same way.”

Cas frowns.

“I told you, that version of me is gone. Anna must still have had some of her vessel here to return to, or of her true form. Mine…” He stops and shakes his head, the grimace he pulls with his mouth looking all wrong on Harvey’s face. “Mine dissipated into the Earth along with the Darkness. I’m still not sure why this part of me ended up in the Veil as it did. Angels are not supposed to live on after death.”

“Maybe it’s the part of you that’s human,” Sam says.

Cas looks unconvinced.

“I am not human, Sam,” he says. “I never was, not even when I was without my Grace. But I suppose it’s possible the aspects of me which were most influenced by my contact with humanity, with the two of you, were changed enough to count.”

“Well, now we need to find you a different vessel,” Dean says. 

Cas glances down at his hands, Harvey’s hands, and back up. He looks troubled.

“Yes. Yes, I didn’t realize, until I was in here…” He stops, shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t know. I…I can leave.”

“No,” Hannah says. “No. You lack your true form, enough of it to survive outside of your vessel. Leaving will kill you, perhaps for good this time. We don’t know enough about how this has worked to be sure.”

Cas looks torn, and Dean can practically see the thoughts going through his head, even after everything Dean said in that weird wood, that he should leave and give Harvey back to Dean, because that has to be what Cas is apologizing for. He has to have seen, in Harvey’s head, what he’s had with Dean these last few days.

“You’re going nowhere until we know how you can do it safely,” Dean says, and he’s losing track of what he thinks about any of this. “But…how’s Harvey doing? He all right?”

Cas nods slowly, his head at a slight angle.

“He’s…calmer than I would have expected. And he would be able to hold an archangel. This version of me is no strain to him.”

“He’s meant to hold Lucifer, right?” Sam asks. “How does that work? I thought I was Lucifer’s true vessel? I thought any others would burn up, if they didn’t outright explode. I mean, even I needed to drink… Um. Even I couldn’t just be his vessel, just like that.”

Dean felt Sam’s gaze fall on him. He refused to look round. They hadn’t dug all the way back to some things in their talks, yet.

“Yes,” Cas says. “Before, they would. You have to understand, I was there, when I dug into the dirt and released the Darkness through all of the world, but in the shock-wave that followed, this part of my self seems to have been killed. In a way, that’s saved me. Kept me apart. But it means I don’t really know what the rest of me has been doing.”

“But you do think it’s you that’s made Harvey into a vessel?” Sam asks, apparently okay with the idea that Cas has more than one edition. “You got any idea at all why you’d do that? Make new vessels?”

“I assume because I could,” Cas says. He sighs again. “You have to understand, finding myself suddenly in this time, with so many things changed, it was… I still feel that shock, that confusion, even if I am not that… This is very difficult to speak about.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Dean says.

“Keep trying,” Sam says at the same time. 

“I remember waking and finding myself here, now, in the bunker, with all of my memory of being Cassiel, and I remember that all of my other memories were…blank, I suppose. But I also remember later, after Stull, when I…um, came together?” 

Cas pauses, looking like he wants to mutter something about partial differential equations and leave it at that. Dean’s long suspected Cas says things like that to shut them up. He stares back at Cas and wills him to keep going this time.

“Okay,” Cas says after a break just long enough that it’s clear he’s had enough of this already. “I have all of those memories, right up until I send myself, and the Darkness with me, into the Earth, and some of them conflict, and some of them overlap. But I’m fairly sure Cassiel wanted to return the archangels to the way they were, and that would mean new vessel lines, what with the old ones being ended.”

“Hey. We’re not ended,” Dean says, stung.

“No,” Cas says, and he drops his eyes as though he doesn’t want to look at Dean as he says the next bit. “But neither you nor Sam has children, and with what you have both been through, it is… What I’m saying is, neither of you… I mean…”

“We’re out of warranty,” Dean says. “Tainted. No longer minty fresh.”

“Yes,” Cas says, drawing the word out as he narrows his eyes. Cas may or may not understand Dean’s references, but he seems to get that Dean’s understood him. “Dean, you have too much of hell in you, now, and too much of the Darkness. And Sam, you have hosted an angel not corrupted by the Darkness, and you made it almost all of the way through the trials. All of those things mean you are no longer the perfect vessels for Michael and Lucifer. And any children you have now…”

This time, Cas glances up at them and shrugs.

“It may not be the case that any children would be unsuitable, but speaking poetically, I doubt Cassiel would want to see his siblings in the children of tainted vessels. He…I was always somewhat…absolute. Back then.”

Dean wonders what it must be like for Cas, to be himself and not himself. He isn’t sure speaking about the archangel version of himself by another name is mentally healthy, but Dean passed by mentally healthy a couple of decades back, so what does he know? 

“And all the other lines are wiped out? All over Earth?” Sam asks, sounding doubtful.

Cas huffs.

“You have to understand, by this point in humanity’s development, almost everyone shares the blood of more than one vessel line, but the magic which makes a suitable vessel requires a more direct descent, and Heaven tended to prune any but the most direct lines, after a while. It was Joshua’s job-”

“Wait. Joshua?” Dean asks. “As in, guy who hangs around in the Garden talking to God, Joshua?”

“Yes,” Cas says. “Exactly what did you think he grew?”

“Not vessels,” Sam says, scowling. 

“Well. That’s not all, but it was certainly part of it,” Cas goes on. “In any case, a new set of vessels, one for each archangel, would be necessary to return the Host to its former glory.”

“You know what else you need for that, Cas?” Dean asks. “Archangels. And they’re dead. All except Michael, who, don’t think we mentioned it yet, made a career change from cutting you up to ruling Heaven again.”

“And Lucifer,” Sam adds. “But he’s still in the Cage.”

“That won’t be an issue to anyone in possession of the full potential of the Darkness,” Cas says. “Not once it’s grounded and usable. But a lot of the more modern part of my mind seems to be here, so I’m not sure whether what’s left has the focus to complete whatever plan it has.”

“You have,” Dean says. “Isn’t this fucking with your head, Cas?”

“A little,” Cas says. “I am used to being multitudes, but not to having some of those split apart, and much less to being the least part.” He sighs. “I suppose I have had practice. Being Steve was…hard. To be so reduced was painful, limiting. This is, at least, not so bad as that. And I seem to have my wings back.”

And Dean has one of those moments where he glimpses, just for a brief instant, how Cas’ experience of things is so very different from Dean’s, because Dean still thinks of Cas without his Grace as Cas without his powers, but not as some lesser, chopped up version of Cas. He’s still Cas, to Dean, no matter what use he has of his wings or his healing or anything else, but he finds it hard to stop and think how it must have been for Cas. 

“Your wings?” Hannah says, sounding hopeful. “I miss the use of my wings.”

“Yes,” Cas agrees, looking at her with sympathy. “I would return them to you if I could, but apart from being more or less restored to myself, I don’t seem to have any of the extra power from the Darkness.”

Well. Scratch getting help from powered-up Cas, then. 

Footsteps behind Dean bring Cas’ attention round, and he smiles. It’s not Cas’ normal smile, and it’s not quite Harvey’s smile, but it’s warm and it’s heartfelt.

“Anna,” Cas says, and he stands and moves out of Dean’s field of vision.

Dean turns in time to see Cas gather Anna into his arms, and to see her hugging him back. He never thought they were that close. 

“Castiel,” she says. “Cas. I am so glad to see you. And without Naomi’s barriers.”

There’s a bitter edge to that, but Anna shakes it off and smiles again, the light in her eyes as warm as Cas’ smile was a minute earlier. The two of them seem genuinely delighted to see each other. Maybe Naomi broke up a lot of Cas’ friendships, over the years.

“And I you,” Cas says. “You’re well? How are you back?”

Anna shakes her head. 

“I don’t entirely remember. I was gone, and then I was here. I think I remember something…but.” 

She stops and presses her lips together. 

“Never mind,” Cas says. “You’re here. And it really is good to see you.”

The look Cas is giving Anna is more than fond. It’s weird enough thinking of Cas doing that, what with the way he sided with Dean and Sam against Anna at the end there, but on Harvey’s face it’s just plain wrong. Dean’s seen the way Harvey looks when he’s interested in someone, when the warmth and light in him is turned on a person he feels drawn to, and the expression isn’t a million miles different. Which is something else he’s not used to thinking about with Cas. 

An image of red hair and pale skin and the Impala’s back seat flashes through his mind, and then of Cas’ lips against his own, and of Harvey in bed, and Dean feels like the ground under him is far from steady. There is no scenario in any magazine or porn film in the world that is this confusing. There’s two bodies over there and he’s had something going on with all three of them. 

“Where’s Rap?” Dean asks, as Anna grips Cas’ forearms and they stare at each other. “She on her own?”

He follows Anna’s gesture out of the room and tells himself he’s not fleeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this keeps trying to head in some well dodgy directions, but I have pulled it back. There is not going to be a fourway sexcapades scene with only three bodies involved. There isn't.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very, very tiny update.

Rap’s body is slouched on the floor against the cabinets in the kitchen. Dean isn’t sure where her mind is. The look in her eyes is distant, disconnected, and Dean almost leaves again. It seems wrong to intrude on her grief. Because she is grieving, that much is clear. Dean knows a little something about that.

“Hey,” he says, keeping his voice soft. “You doing okay?”

She folds her arms more tightly around herself and looks away. 

“Look, Cas is a good guy, all right? And he’s already offered to leave-”

“Good. Let him,” Rap says. 

It should sound biting, but it’s dull. Even her hair looks flattened. Dean wanted Cas back, but he didn’t want to make anyone look like this, let alone someone like Rap, who’s been acting like an aunt to Dean and Sam, too, in the few days they’ve been here, and who he knows already lost a friend because of Sam and Dean. No matter what they do to fix it, what they’ve already managed, he can’t get away from the fact that the Darkness wouldn’t have escaped into the world without Dean and Sam’s actions. 

It isn’t like the Apocalypse, a curse Sam and Dean were caught up in since before they were born. That wasn’t on them. Any damage from it, even if their choices altered who exactly got hurt, or killed, was going to fall on someone, somehow. But the Darkness? 

He took the Mark to take on Abaddon, and she was a problem. No question. He isn’t sure, though, after all the dust has settled, if he needed to make that choice, how much of it was a reaction to Sam almost dying in the Trials. There’s a chance the Knight of Hell would have been no worse than leaving Crowley on the throne. Hell, they should have just ganked Crowley when they had him. And he isn’t sure they should have gone near the Trials. Right this moment, he isn’t sure of very much, except he doesn’t like to see a good person like Rap slumped in grief.

“Cas is a good guy,” Dean says. “And he’s learned a lot since we met him. No way will he let Harvey-”

But Dean finds he can’t finish, the end of his sentence swallowed by a sob. He manages to choke it down. He hasn’t any right to make this about him, about any worry or grief he might be feeling. Harvey and him, they’ve only known each other a few days. Rap’s the guy’s aunt. 

She doesn’t respond to Dean’s part-sentence. He isn’t even sure she’s really heard it. 

Dean glances round the room, sees nothing to help him, and sighs. Taking care not to startle Rap, he crosses to her and sinks to the floor, stretching his legs out next to hers and resting his back against the next cabinet along. For a while, they do nothing but breath near each other. 

“He was so small,” Rap says, at last. Her voice is small, quiet in a way that doesn’t suit her. She isn’t a person who’s meant to be small or quiet or contained. “When I first saw him. Tiny.”

Dean turns his head to face her, but he doesn’t interrupt. He isn’t really certain she’s talking to him, anyway.

“I didn’t get to visit for the first month. Business trip. I was still working for Niamh back then and we had a client in a real taking over something. I can’t even remember what. But as soon as I could, I flew out to visit them. My sister put him in my arms. And he was so small.” 

Her voice breaks.

“He’s not gone,” Dean says. “He’s not gone, Rap. Cas’ll take good care of him and we’ll get him back.”

“You don’t know that,” she says, and Dean can still hear the tears in her voice as well as see them in her eyes. “You think I haven’t heard about the two of you? Other hunters, they’ve told me I’m mad to get involved with either of you, that when it comes down to it you’ll always save each other over anyone else. I don’t think most of them must know about your angel, but can you really tell me you’d put Harvey’s life over Castiel’s? When you’re so…so willing to do whatever it takes to keep Sam alive? You don’t give up on the people you love, Dean, and I admire that, but not if it means…”

She trails off, shaking her head, and buries her face in her hands. This time, it’s Dean who pulls her into a hug, and she lets him.


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's posintg short bits of fic night. Have some of this one, too.

Dean isn’t sure he’s doing the right thing when he leads Cas out of the house and has him slide into the car. Sam stays behind, saying he’ll keep an eye on Rap, but it’s obvious from the way Sam shared a look with Anna, from the way they both looked at Hannah, that some decision has been made to give Cas and Dean some space to talk alone. Not for the first time, he wonders what exactly they all think of Dean’s relationship with Cas. He’s never quite dared ask. 

Three times on the way back to Harvey’s place, Dean glances over and is shocked not to see the blue eyes and sharp jawline he expects. Harvey’s skin is darker that Cas’, the result of his part Guatemalan heritage, and it isn’t what Dean’s expecting to see when he looks at Cas. The hair’s not too far off the right colour, but Harvey wears his longer. It’s just… It’s just weird.

“You doing okay?” he asks as he pulls into Harvey’s street.

Cas frowns, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes,” he says. “Harvey not sure why we’re going to his house.”

“He knows?”

Dean didn’t really stop to think where he was headed. It was Harvey’s or Rap’s, or find some motel, and taking Cas to a motel seems all kinds of sleezy. The fact they’ve spent time together in loads of motel rooms in the past is irrelevant. They hadn’t declared they loved each other, then. It would feel like sneaking off to do the dirty on Harvey, only with the added insult of taking Harvey’s body along.

“Look,” Dean says, when Cas just stares ahead at nothing, “I just need somewhere we can talk, all right? If Harvey doesn’t want to be here, I’ll find someplace else.”

“No. He says to use his house.” Cas tilts his head and Dean hates the fact that Cas can hear Harvey when he can’t. “He says he doesn’t want to hear us talking. I’ve sent him to sleep for now.”

“You shut him off? What, like he’s a computer?”

Dean isn’t sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, knowing Harvey can hear what he talks about with Cas is unsettling, but switching Harvey off feels like some dystopian nightmare. 

“He agreed,” Cas says, and Dean isn’t sure if Cas means to a nap or to the whole possession thing in the first place. 

“Right.”

He pulls the Impala to a stop and reaches over to Cas, pausing with his hand near Cas’ hip.

“Harvey has his key in his back pocket,” he says, and Cas nods, and angles his body so that Dean can reach. Which isn’t weird at all.

Sliding his hand into Cas’ pocket, Harvey’s pocket, is an exercise in the surreal. He’s gripped the ass inside those jeans, more than once, but not when Cas has been wearing it. He gets the key as quickly as he can and in minutes they’re inside the house, Dean making a pot of coffee because he needs something to do with his hands. 

He hears Cas moving around, hears the sound of things being picked up and put down. 

“Cas,” he calls, when he can’t take it anymore, and turns to see Cas in Harvey’s body arrive in the kitchen doorway, a small grey vase in his hands. “You wanna sit down? Kind of hard to get my head straight when you’re fussing round like that.”

Cas regards him with no expression.

“I disturb you. Seeing me wear this vessel, it disturbs you.”

Dean opens his mouth, but finds little will come out.

“It’s okay,” Cas says, looking to the side and setting the vase down on a counter-top. “I understand. I’ve seen the looks on people’s faces before, when I’ve taken their loved one as a vessel.”

“Harvey’s not my-” But Dean isn’t sure if that’s a lie. “Anyway, I thought Jimmy was your first vessel.”

“No,” Cas says. “Naomi took many things from my mind. Besides, I said angels hadn’t walked the Earth in two thousand years, not that we’d never walked the Earth at all. I’ve had many vessels.”

“And how’s Harvey holding up as a suit in comparison?” Dean asks, and wants to stab a fork in the back of his own hand for being so crass. But he’s got to say something or start screaming. 

Cas seems to take the question seriously.

“Very well. An archangel’s vessel is superior to others. Harvey isn’t such a good vessel as you’d make, Dean, but he’s still exemplary. And with my increased knowledge, well, Jimmy may not have worked.”

Dean isn’t sure what to make of that. Is Cas saying his old vessel is gone for good? That Dean will never see Cas with those blue eyes again?

Worse, is he saying Harvey’s stuck being a home for a lost archangel?

“You seem troubled,” Cas says. 

“Oh, no, I’m just fine,” Dean says. “I watched you die again, met Harvey, found you, lost Harvey to you. Oh, yeah, and in the middle of all that I came out to Sam. And Michael’s back in action. It’s all good.”

“Dean,” Cas says, and he sounds impatient, “you are allowed to be upset. Or angry. I didn’t mean to take your lover from you.”

There might be a tiny thread of hurt in there. Dean’s finding it harder to read Cas in this…in Harvey.

“I need you to tell me there’s a way to have Harvey back and keep you, too,” he says. 

All this work they’ve been putting in to being more honest, more open, must be working, because Dean gets that out without choking hardly at all. He pours himself a mug of coffee to cover, setting out a second one and pausing with the cream partway to the mug. Cas likes cream. Harvey doesn’t.

“Make it the way Harvey likes it,” Cas says, apparently picking up on the issue. “I’ll wake him up.”

“Thought you said he didn’t want to listen to us talk.”

“He doesn’t. I’m going to take a back seat. Let you speak to him.”

And before Dean can say anything else, Harvey slumps into a different posture, stumbling and catching himself. His eyes are glazed for a moment.

“Dean?” he says, and his voice is higher, back to normal. “Is that…? Are you making coffee?”

Plastering a smile onto his face, Dean holds out the second mug.

“What else do you want to wake up to?”


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to make this chapter longer, but someone *meaningful look at [captainangua](http://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua)* suggested simply saying Harvey had something nice coming made her worry for him even more, so I'm posting this tiny snippet so you can see I am totally NOT AN EVIL TORTURER WHO ONLY BRINGS PAIN!

Harvey curves his palms around the mug and stares into it, as though he’s picked up how to scry while letting Cas wear him as a cloak. Maybe he has. Fuck knows what’s buried in the angel’s brain. Maybe Harvey’s skilled up from being in the same body as a repository of ancient knowledge.

Or he just isn’t sure what to say to Dean.

“Hey, come on,” Dean says, when he’s downed two mugs and can’t pretend any longer that this isn’t awkward as fuck. “Speak to me. You all right?”

At that, Harvey glances up at Dean, a frown bringing those dark eyebrows down into sharp lines. 

“All right?” he asks. “Have you any idea what it’s like, to be that close to an…to an angel? Your Cas, he’s a riot of colours and emotions and missions. So alien. And vast. And that’s not even all of him?”

Harvey sits further forwards on the seat he’s taken, leaning over the breakfast bar towards Dean. There’s a light in his eyes.

“He’s fire and fury, Dean, all shifting angles and destruction, and then, all mixed up in it, this…this yearning to help. To heal. It’s…he’s…”

Harvey stops, his lips parted, as though all the words he wants to say are building behind the dam of his teeth and can’t make it through. 

Dean finds himself staring. When Jimmy spoke to them, way back when Cas was dragged to Heaven, he said it was like being chained to a comet. Dean remembers that very clearly. Chained. As in trapped, limited. He expected Harvey to feel the same, but it looks more like Harvey’s had a religious experience.

Poor choice of words.

“But you’re okay?” Dean asks, in case the guy’s had his mind burned or something and is going to react as soon as the pain sets in. “Because Cas didn’t seem to think you were okay, back when we first got back.”

Harvey shakes his head, his frown growing.

“Look, I’m not saying it wasn’t overwhelming. I didn’t know what I was getting into. Not really. I mean, yeah, you told me about vessels, but you’ve never been one, have you? No. I know you said you were Michael’s meat-suit in waiting, but you didn’t ever go through with it.”

“And, what, you’re saying I’d have enjoyed it if I tried it? Because Sam tried it on for size. Twice. And he didn’t like it.”

Dean can’t help the defensive note in his voice. Worry beats in his throat. He’s torn between worry for Harvey and concern for Cas. 

“Castiel’s different,” Harvey says. “He must be. I feel the…the love he has, for humanity. For you. Dean, he loves you.”

Dean swallows. 

“Yeah,” he manages. “Yeah, I know.”

Harvey looks at Dean with something approaching pity.

“You don’t seem happy about it.”

“Dude, how do you want me to feel about it?” Dean asks. “I hook up with a guy and the god-damned love of my life tells me the feeling’s mutual right before vanishing down my hook-up’s neck? How am I supposed to deal with that?”

There’s a faint shift in Harvey’s expression. Hurt. Dean’s hurt him.

“Hook-up?” Harvey asks.

“I didn’t… Oh, fuck,” Dean says. He presses the heel of his palm against one eye. “You said you thought we could have something, and I gotta admit, I think we could’ve had, too. But Cas? He’s…”

Harvey cuts him off before Dean has to say anything else.

“Yeah,” he says. “Dean, I can see it. It’s okay. The two of you have something I wouldn’t want to get between.”

They fall into silence, Harvey still with that slightly star-struck expression on his face. 

Dean watches him in snatches, tracing the shape of his nose, the curve of his cheek, the column of his throat. He’s a beautiful man. In his own way, he’s as handsome as Cas’ other vessel ever was, and Dean’s into it. Obviously. But Cas is blue eyes and full lips to Dean. There are so many aspects of Cas’ body, what Dean thinks about as Cas’ real body, even though he knows it isn’t, that are sexier and more desirable the longer Dean sits here and thinks about never getting to take the angel to bed. 

Because he can’t. Not just Cas in the other body, but ever. Because it would be cheating on Harvey with Harvey’s flesh, and that’s so screwed up Dean’s having trouble factoring it into his life.

“You know,” Harvey says, contemplatively, “I’ve always wanted the kind of connection you and Castiel have. Without all the pain and dying, anyway. But the bond? The chemistry? God, just from the bits that’ve seeped through to me, I don’t get how you’ve managed to keep your clothes on around each other. Ever.”

“They tend to stay on by themselves,” Dean says, not really in command of what comes out of his mouth. 

Harvey mentioning a naked Cas, a naked Cas with his hands on Dean, is almost too much. Dean shifts on his chair and clears his throat.

The light in Harvey’s eyes grows, and Dean gets the sudden feeling it really is a light, and the light is Cas, peering over Harvey’s shoulder, so to speak.

“He, er, he said he wouldn’t listen,” Dean says.

“No. He said he’d take a back seat,” Harvey corrects. “You have no idea how much he wants to be watching you, to be with you. How much he wants to kiss you again.”

“You sound like you’re coming on to me for Cas,” Dean says, trying to laugh. 

It isn’t that he’s against the idea. It’s weird, yeah, but not repulsive. Actually, the brief thought that Harvey and Cas might both be into Dean right now is kind of… It’s… Well, it’s really fucking hot, is what it is.

Still with practically no control over his own mouth, he goes on.

“How about you? You want to kiss me, too?”

Harvey doesn’t react for a long moment, long enough Dean thinks he’s crossed some line. Then he smiles, and nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d really like to do that right now.”

“And the squishy angel center isn’t putting you off at all?”

Harvey’s smile grows.

“I’m not a celestial twinkie, Dean.”

Despite himself, Dean finds a real laugh in his mouth. 

“Yeah, all right. But, you really want that? Some weird-ass three-way?” At Harvey’s slow nod, Dean feels a spike of interest shoot through him. “And Cas? What does he say?”

Harvey slides off his seat, rounding the breakfast-bar and stopping a few inches from Dean. This close, Dean feels the heat radiating from Harvey, from Cas inside of Harvey, and he makes himself stay still, only his head turned to look up, as Harvey’s gaze travels down Dean’s body and back up.

“Cas says he’s happy to take notes,” Harvey says. “Enthusiastic, fully on-board notes.”

He lifts his hand to Dean’s cheek, running the pad of one finger along Dean’s skin until he reaches Dean’s chin. At the gentle pressure, Dean tips his head back, and meets Harvey’s mouth. 

He swears he tastes something like starlight on his tongue.

********************************************

By the time they reach the bedroom, Dean’s not sure if it’s Harvey or Cas in charge. He thinks they might be switching out, but no matter who’s driving it’s always with a look of such tender desire in those brown eyes that Dean almost sabotages it with sarcasm out of reflex. 

He’s almost sure it’s Harvey who strips him out of his jacket, taking the time to run his hands over Dean’s shoulders and chest with just enough pressure that Dean feels safe, present in the moment. He’s sure it’s Cas who kisses down his throat, words that must be ancient and strangely living being pressed into Dean’s skin. He doesn’t know what they mean, but he feels them.

He’s got no idea who slides a hand down inside Dean’s pants, squeezing his ass and pulling Dean’s hips forwards. 

The gasp at the contact is definitely from Dean.

“Can we?” one of the them asks, the other hand moving to Dean’s zipper. 

It’s probably Cas. The plural sounds like it comes easy, from someone who can think of themselves as a host, even if it’s only a host of two. 

Dean says yes to both of them.


	35. Chapter 35

Dean feels Harvey’s orgasm, feels it shuddering through the man. Men. Man and angel?

Fuck, he isn’t even sure if they can both feel that at once. 

The thought sticks with Dean through the aftershocks, through Harvey fetching a washcloth and cleaning them up.

Once he’s lying with his head on Harvey’s shoulder, the covers thrown back to let cool air at Dean’s skin, he musters enough mental energy to ask.

“What’s it like? With, you know, the two of you, er, both scratching the itch at once?”

Harvey drops a kiss to Dean’s forehead, his fingers stroking through the short strands on Dean’s scalp, and takes a few moments before answering.

“Intense,” he says, thoughtful. “Broad. I mean, sex with you? Mind-blowing. But with Cas in here, too? It’s…it’s a revelation. Everything’s fuller.”

“Some things were pretty full already,” Dean says, wriggling his hips a bit.

He feels the puff of Harvey’s laugh against his brow.

“Thanks, but you know I don’t mean that. It’s like there’s this light filling up every part of my body, right through every cell. My nerves feel as if they’re glowing.”

Dean frowns.

“Gotta be honest, man. Not sure that’s a good thing.”

“No,” Harvey says. “No, it is. Right at the start, it was too much. I was held down by this immense presence, squashed flat against the floor of my own mind. But now? Now I’m not being held down, I’m just being held.”

And Dean wonders if Harvey, left to himself in his body and with Cas back in his normal vessel, would be making a play for the angel himself. 

“Still gotta be fucking weird to share a cock,” Dean says, because he has to bring this down from high poetry somehow.

“Dean.” 

And that reproachful utterance is Cas. Has to be. No-one else can make Dean’s name a language all on its own. The hand stroking him changes rhythm slightly, and Dean is sure that if they keep this up long term he’ll be able to identify which of them is in control from any detail of touch or action or speech possible.

“Well, it has.”

“For eons, I essentially shared a mind with billions. Sharing a few inches of flesh, however much pleasure it can bring, hardly compares.”

“Two of you at once is enough for now,” Dean says. “I don’t want to think about millions of you getting up in my business.”

He regrets it as soon as he says it, and even more when Cas falls silent. Even the warmth from Harvey’s body seems to dim.

“What’d I say?” Dean asks, because Sam’s told him, during their long conversations, that Dean needs to listen more, needs to ask what’s up rather than assuming he knows.

“The Host,” Cas says. “I remember, now, how they sounded in the past, their voices woven together in song. The song’s threadbare now, where it exists at all.”

Not sure what to say to that, Dean shifts, twisting his body round and pulling himself up until he can press his lips to Harvey’s, feeling Cas kiss back after only a moment.

“Hey,” Dean says against those lips, his breath ghosting across them, “I’m not gonna pretend I know what that’s like, but you’ve got me now. You get that, right? And I know I’m not making up for that loss-”

A hard kiss cuts him off, and he lets Cas roll him onto his back, the hand slipping from Dean’s head to his cheek, the thumb resting up over his jaw as the fingers curl around his neck. He thinks he might know what Harvey means about the difference between being held down and being held.

“You are more than enough, Dean,” Cas says. 

And he sets about showing Dean that having an angel in it does wonders for any body’s refractory period. 

******************************************

They’re eating cereal when Dean’s phone beeps, and he checks his messages to find one from Jody. She ended up taking longer picking up the vessel than expected, and will explain when she arrives, but she’s going to be in town in a few hours. Harvey nods when Dean tells him, and within moments it’s Cas looking back through those brown eyes. 

Despite the pressure of having Michael and the Dead and whatever else to deal with, Dean’s starting to think this could work, Cas and Harvey in the one body. Sure, he never really thought he’d go for a relationship with three people in it, but so far it’s working out pretty well, and they all fit in the bed together. Got to be practical about these things.

Sam and Rap meet them at Rap’s place, with no sign of Anna or Hannah or anyone else. Rap’s eyes are red and bruised looking, and her hair seems flat, the curls less vibrant and springy. She won’t look at Harvey to start with, and shakes her head when Dean tells her it’s really Harvey. By the time they’re all in the living room, it is Harvey.

Once Harvey speaks, stepping forwards and asking her about some piece of pottery that means nothing to Dean, Rap sobs and throws herself at Harvey, who wraps her up tight. 

“It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay. Cas is in here, and it’s weird, and I get you’re upset, but it’s really okay. I’m here, too.”

At Sam’s questioning look, Dean gestures at nothing and shrugs. 

“They’re sharing,” he says. “Trading off. Or something.”

Sam blinks.

“That’s… Okay.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “So, Jody’s gonna be here pretty soon. Anyone come up with a new plan while I was out?”

Sam shakes his head, turning to look at Harvey and Rap, who are standing apart now with Rap wiping her eyes. She nods at Harvey, and Dean sees the moment Cas takes back over, the body straightening and the expression shifting. Beside him, he hears Sam breath in sharply. 

“I need to inspect the vessel,” Cas says, as though he isn’t talking about a living, breathing human being. “Perhaps I can divine more of, um, my plan, if I see more of the vessels.”

“You can pore over the poor sap Jody’s fetching all you want,” Dean says, and determinedly pushes aside the image of Cas doing that the way he’s inspected Dean’s body overnight. He coughs and rubs the back of his neck. “Until then, anyone got any other ideas?”

“You’re the angel,” Rap says, ignoring Dean. She’s staring right at Cas, her eyes still red, and there’s something about the shape of her mouth and the set of her shoulders that makes Dean want to get in the way. “You’re Castiel.”

“Yes.”

Cas looks back at her and narrows his eyes. Harvey’s eyes.

“You’re upset.”

And ten points to Cas for pointing out the fucking obvious.

Rap blinks.

“You think?” she says. “When am I getting my nephew back? Am I getting him back?”

“I don’t know,” Cas says, and it isn’t clear which part of the question that’s answering. 

Rap doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that. Dean’s not sure, either. Cas has told him he’ll do his best to get Harvey back to running the ship solo, but he gets Cas might not want to raise Rap’s hopes when he isn’t sure yet how to do that. 

“Is your body, er, your vessel gone, Cas?” Sam asks. “You can’t find it or something?”

“By the time I took on the Darkness, that vessel had already been remade more than once. For me. In theory, it should be possible to remake it again, but I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know who did it the last times. I assumed my father had something to do with it, but it’s never been certain.” Cas pauses and purses his lips. Harvey’s lips. “Besides, the last version was…warped by the time I left it.”

“The tentacles?” Dean asks. “And the…the wings and things? Those were part of the vessel?”

He thought they were part of Cas’ true self, poking out through the seems, so to speak, but Cas is shaking his head.

“Manifestations of my True Form, yes. More so than a basic human vessel could be. But still not, really, me. And if we could find that vessel, if it hadn’t dissolved into the Earth, it would still have the mutations you saw. From what I remember, you weren’t especially keen on them.”

He aims that at Dean, and the undercurrent is there, the one that says Cas is thinking of Dean not wanting to get familiar with that version of Cas’ body in quite the same way he’s shown enthusiasm for with Harvey as the suit. Dean manages a smile, but it only hits one side of his mouth and he feels the flush up his cheeks. 

“Huh. Yeah. Well. One thing at a time, Cas.”

Sam has to know that staying overnight at Harvey’s means something, but Dean finds he isn’t over keen to confirm it. Admitting he’s into guys, that he’s into Harvey or Cas separately, still isn’t the same as Sam knowing all three of them have made the beast with two backs and three minds. Dean’s still not totally sure how to fit that into his own mind, but he sure as shit knows he isn’t interested in adding tentacles to the mix.

Maybe the wings. 

No. No, not the time to be thinking about that.

“Of course,” Cas says, and looks at Sam. “Do you have access to the records from the Bunker?”

Sam nods and fetches his tablet, and before long the two of them are deep into searching for anything on sigils. Cas has Rap bring paper and starts making notes, adding in details he says he remembers from his far-distant memories. It turns out those are sketchy in places, and Dean feels the pulsating start of a headache when Cas starts talking about his memory being encoded in his Grace and in waves and in fuck knows what else.

“You know what,” Dean says, standing and noting that Rap has quite a pile of notes around her, too, just from writing down shit Cas had been saying, “we don’t all need to be here for this. I’m going to go see the wonder twins, see if they know anything else. Call me if Jody turns up before I’m back.”

“Wonder twins?” Sam asks.

“Anna and Hannah,” Dean says. “Sound like they should be a circus act.”

And he leaves before Cas can explain to him that they’re both angels, not acrobats, or anything like that. He told himself he’d go back and get more answers from Anna, and she has a body that looks just like her old one. She must have some clue how they can get Cas and Harvey back to being, well, Cas and Harvey.


	36. Chapter 36

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so it's been quite a gap since the last chapter, but we're back.

Anna opens the door and waves Dean inside without asking why he’s back. He trails after her, expecting to be taken through to the living room, and instead finds himself following her down the hallway, through the kitchen and out a door at the back. 

He steps down onto a paved area, ringed with terracotta pots filled with plants, and finds Hannah sitting at a metal table. At Anna’s gesture, he takes one of the free seats. 

“Having a coffee morning?” he asks, noting the tall pot and the cups, the plates with small cakes on them. “Are we going to talk about knitting?”

“There’s nothing wrong with knitting,” Anna says, calmly. “My human mother used to knit. She found it soothing.”

“You didn’t?” Dean asks.

Anna smiles, and looks at him from the corner of her eye.

“I never had the patience,” she says. 

“So, the coffee?” Dean asks. “Don’t we have more serious things to think about?”

“I told you, Dean,” Anna says, pouring another cup of coffee and passing it to him, “I’m not entirely an angel and I’m not entirely human. I find I need to eat and drink. And I figured Hannah should try some decent coffee. She tells me her vessel likes the kind of thing with caramel and cream and sprinkles. I thought she might like this better.”

“It’s very pleasant,” Hannah says, although she doesn’t sound certain. “Have you spoken with Castiel? What does he want us to do?”

Still loyal to Cas, then. Dean supposes some things are hard to shake, and they did hug each other yesterday. Hannah’s not changed her mind and run back to Michael, at any rate. 

“He wants to inspect this newest vessel Jody’s bringing by,” Dean says. “He was muttering about sigils and getting all intense about some angelic art project when I left.”

“Does he need help with it?” Hannah asks, the warm brown of this vessel’s eyes lighting up, presumably at the thought of having something useful to do.

“Yeah, no. I mean he’s writing down sigils. I don’t know whether he has any plan for them. Think it might just have been revision or something,” Dean tells her, and watches her shoulders slump. “But I could do with some intel. From Anna, mainly, but if you know anything feel free to chime in.”

Anna nods at him and gestures with her cup, and Dean gets on with it.

“I need to know if we can get Cas his own vessel back. Or a version of. You said you sort of remembered something, from before you came back.”

Her hair catches the morning light as she tips her head forward, glinting copper, and Dean flashes back to the Impala again, to that hair spread out over the seat. He remembers watching her die, too. Knowing angels is weird, is what it is. 

“I don’t know,” Anna says. “I asked Gabriel for help when I got my Grace back, but Castiel tells me he died.”

“Gabriel?”

Dean isn’t sure why he’s surprised. Gabriel must have been the closest thing to an angelic underground Anna had, even if he is kind of surprised she got hold of him. 

“The vessel he had wasn’t his original one,” Anna says. “He let that one go back to his family pretty early on, once he worked out how to replicate it. And upgrade it. The vessel was just about suitable for an archangel, but from a minor branch. Gabriel didn’t want to go for his True Vessel of that time.”

“Too easy to find?” Dean asks, as though he knows anything about hiding out from Heaven in whatever time Gabriel skipped out.

“Yes,” Anna agrees. “And he’d worked out by then that he needed another identity. Holding the powers of an archangel and a God both wasn’t going to work out for the man he took.”

“And I don’t suppose you got any idea how Gabriel made himself a vessel? Or how he made you one?”

Anna takes a sip of her drink before she replies, and Dean has time to see the way Hannah’s looking at her. There’s something of the awe he’s seen on her face when she’s looking at Castiel. He’s struck by the memory that Anna was Castiel’s superior, once upon a time.

“I only know as much as I do because I lead the Garrison,” she says. “Without my support, he might have been caught a half dozen times.”

Dean, about to take a drink from his own cup, pauses with the rim inches from his lips and feels his eyebrows scurry halfway up his forehead.

“You helped Gabriel?” he asks. “How’d you get away with that? Wait, you were all rebellious all the way back then?”

Anna snorts.

“You should know that Castiel and I each rebelled many times, but I was generally more subtle about it. Or at least I got caught less often. And I managed to hide the extent of my disobedience. Up until I Fell, anyway. They were only a step behind me on that one.”

“Cas didn’t help you with that?” Dean asks.

“Castiel tried to talk me out of Falling,” Anna says. “He said it wasn’t the way to deal with the rumours we were hearing. But I thought I’d found a way to keep my memories, even without my Grace, and I thought I…”

Anna stops and shakes her head, looking off to the side at something Dean’s sure must have happened a long time ago.

“Rumours?” Hannah asks.

“You and Cas, you knew something was up back then?” Dean asks. “And you thought, what, you could fight it by being human?”

“Not exactly,” Anna says. “I wasn’t supposed to stay human for good. Not really. But our superiors knew I’d stumbled onto something, and it was a way to escape being dragged to Naomi. They didn’t know about Castiel’s involvement that time, but we both suspected he’d be reconditioned anyway. I wanted him to Fall with me, but he said one of us should stay. Gather more information.”

Anna grimaces and frowns.

“Actually, he didn’t think either of us should Fall. But Uriel came after me, and I acted. We didn’t have our plans in place.”

“You ended up out of the game,” Dean says.

Anna nods.

“And Cas must have had his head cut into by Naomi,” Dean goes on, “because he was not playing both sides when I first met him.”

“I don’t know why they ever thought they could just keep wiping him,” Anna says. “With my memories back, I know what he was. I have to think… It can only be that Naomi didn’t know he was Cassiel. The archangels, Raphael and Michael at least, must have wanted that information locked down tight, even from their own people.”

“So her brainwashing never worked as well as it should have done,” Dean says, and sees confirmation on Anna’s face. “And you counted on that? Did you know?”

“Not what he was. Neither did he,” Anna says. “But that conditioning never seemed to take for long? Yes. That we knew.”

“Does any of this help Castiel to get his vessel back?” Hannah asks.

“It helps me get a headache,” Dean says, and downs his coffee. “Huh. That is good.”

Anna smiles thanks at him, but worry shades her eyes. 

“The only thing I can think to try is summoning Gabriel. Maybe his death is a fake. It wouldn’t be the first time. Or perhaps we’ll get one of the beings who worked with him when he became Loki. It was always arrogant of us to assume that Heaven had the only power.”

“You can do that?” Dean asks, and waves a hand at the look on Anna’s face. “Sorry. Yeah. I didn’t mean to insult you. I can be kind of a dick, from what Sam says.”

Neither of them contradict him, and he tries not to mind. 

“Anna and I will try to contact Gabriel,” Hannah says, and she puts Dean in mind of the way he used to speak sometimes, back when his dad turned up again and Dean had to pull back the feeling he was in charge. “Let Castiel know we’ll report back as soon as we have anything.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Dean says. “But…is there any reason we can’t do it now?”

This time, the two angels share a look, and Dean bristles.

“Oh, come on. Don’t be playing the ‘weak and fragile’ human card on me. I’ve been through enough you know I can hold my own.”

“It’s not that,” Anna says, a bit too carefully. “Dean, Gabriel died saving you and your brother, because you challenged him on his habit of staying out of things. I don’t think he’ll want to see you. If he is still alive, that is.”

“If he’s already dead, it won’t make any difference,” Hannah agrees, and Dean wonders if angels having kin could in any way mean Cas and Hannah are more closely related than some others. 

“Well, look,” Dean says, “we can try it with me here, because I’ve got nothing else to do right now that’s useful and I’m needing to be useful. You get how that is. And if he doesn’t show, I’ll clear out and you can try again without me. That sound good?”

The look this time is longer, and if they’re having some freaky angel-telepathy moment then Dean just hopes they throw in a few comments to each other about how good his hair’s looking.

“Very well,” Anna says, and puts down her cup with a click. “Let’s go summon an archangel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given the gap, let me know if I've mixed anything up and you catch it. I may have to reconsider this lark of writing a dozen WIP at once, but it's just how my brain wants to work, so there's that.


	37. Chapter 37

They don’t get Gabriel.

What they do get, after pouring coloured sand in intricate, interlocking circles, and burning enough kinds of herbs that Dean feels as though he’s inside a gourmet dish, is a puff of smoke, a flash of something akin to lightning, and a woman with dark hair kneeling on the floor.

She’s got golden eyes, but that’s not the first thing Dean notices about her. No, that’d be the fact she’s wearing what looks like a wolf’s skin, head included, the muzzle on top of her skull. 

She’s on her feet in moments, regarding them with more humour than Dean expected, and in the space created by a decided lack of explanation, Dean takes in more of her. Golden eyes, dark hair, wolf skin. Check. Only, now he looks more carefully, the wolf skin doesn’t look draped over her so much as being a part of her. And he can see through it.

“You’re not normal,” the woman says, looking right at Dean.

She plays with a pendant around her neck as she speaks, a smooth stone threaded through with a ribbon, and Dean blinks.

“Not getting the feeling you’d fit in as a soccer mom,” he says. 

“That’s more my sister’s thing,” the woman says, and winks. “But if you want to role-play-”

“Fenrir,” Anna says, and the woman falls silent. “We were trying to summon Loki.”

“No,” the woman, Fenrir, says slowly, drawing out the word. “No, you were trying to summon Gabriel. And you should know by now that he’s dead and gone, so I popped over to make sure you’d stop calling. It’s hard enough to lose a parent without having people calling him all the time.”

“We’ve attempted this once,” Hannah says, as though that’s the main point.

“He’s really gone?” Anna asks.

“You think I’d lie about this?” Fenrir asks. “Come on. You helped Dad out, a few times, and he did you a solid with the body, which, good call, by the way. I dig you as a redhead. So I figured you deserve a personal response on this. But, yeah, no signs of him in years.”

Dean’s pretty sure his brain is still bruised from all the revelations of the last few days, which must be why it’s taking him so long to put these pieces together.

“Hold up,” he says. “Fenrir? As in the wolf who’s going to eat the sun?”

“No. Well. Depends who you ask,” she says. “My to-do list says I get to munch on Odin. Or it did, before your Lucifer took him out.”

“You don’t sound too cut up about that,” Dean says. 

Fenrir shrugs. It makes the wolf skin ripple like an image on water. She stops rolling that stone along the ribbon and holds it firm in her hand.

“You learn to roll with things,” she says. “Not like I was looking forward to it, exactly. One thing I inherited from my dear old dad - I don’t like family conflict. Of course, I don’t much like finding myself facing Dean Winchester, either. What with you pretty much getting Dad killed.”

He supposes he should have expected he’d be recognised, but she didn’t name him right away, and somehow it does throw him now. He looks to Anna.

“We don’t want to make things harder for you,” she says, “but you must have noticed the Darkness.”

“Oh, yeah,” Fenrir says, her words rising and falling like a tide. “You could say we noticed. Cassiel woke up my brother with that plunging into the Earth bit. Had to sing him to sleep again. Some of my kind were all for taking it as the End of Days, but with no Odin for me to eat it all kind of petered out. Glad, really. Hel has a bake-sale at her school coming up, and she is mad keen for everyone to try her lemon squares.”

And the worse part is, that’s not even the weirdest thing Dean’s had to wrap his mind around in the last few months, let alone in his life.

“We apologise,” Anna says, “but Cassiel is why we’re here. We need a new vessel for him, one capable of holding an archangel, and your father is the only one who knows how to do that.”

“What? Dad?” Fenrir says. “Dad was great at illusion, yeah, but for something real he went to one of the smiths.”

“One of them?” Hannah asks. “Which one?”

Fenrir shrugs.

“He shopped around. You know Dad. He didn’t exactly stick to one mythology. He had some pretty nice work done by Hephaestus at one point, but I don’t think the guy did the vessel-work. Look, if you want a vessel for your mighty, world-shaking archangel, you’re going to need to ask around. And be prepared to source some rare materials. We’re talking ‘sound of a cat’s paws’ rare, here.”

She lets go of the stone pendant and sets her hands on her hips.

“We done? Because I’ve got shit to do, people.”

“You have no idea which smith he used?” Anna asks. “Any clue could speed things up.”

Fenrir stares unblinking at Anna for longer than is comfortable, and shrugs.

“It means that much to you, I can ask around. For a price. But I can’t promise anything.”

“What price?” Dean asks.

Sam would be proud of him, asking before diving in with any payment he was asked for.

“I deal in future-promises,” Fenrir says. “Take it or leave it.”

“That’s not a wise bargain,” Anna says. “You at least have to agree to caveats.”

Dean can believe she’s Gabriel’s daughter when she rolls her eyes.

“Sure. Fine. Nothing that’ll risk any of your lives, or your loved ones’ lives, or any firmly held morals. Okay? Can’t say fairer than that.”

Five minutes later, the wolf who’s meant to signal Ragnarok leaves with an assurance she’ll speak to every supernatural smith her dad dealt with, and Dean’s rubbing his eyes. He has no idea what Cas is going to say about this, but Dean can’t let Harvey lose his life to being an angel-suit. 

Even if he hasn’t got any idea if the three of them will work with Cas and Harvey not being a package deal. 

 

******************************

Cas is less than pleased.

It’s the first time Dean’s seen Harvey’s eyes angry, and he isn’t even sure what the problem is.

“I thought you’d be pleased,” Dean says. Well, hisses. 

Sam and Rap are in the next room and he doesn’t feel like having this conversation in front of them. In those few months he was with Lisa, he got a feel for when a talk counted as domestic, and there’s a similar sense to this one. No way is he confirming to Sam, let alone Rap, that he’s in the weirdest three-way relationship known to man by having them see Cas and him argue.

“Harvey is fine with hosting me for now,” Cas says, low and deliberate, and Dean pretends that does nothing for him. “Involving a creature as uncontrollable as Fenrir is foolish.”

“Wasn’t exactly the plan,” Dean says. “Just kind of rolled with it. And your angel pals signed off on it. Hell, Anna’s the one who suggested we go to Gabriel. Not my fault if the guy’s out of business.”

“I very much doubt he’s gone for good,” Cas says, and at least there’s less anger in it. “Cassiel wouldn’t have created a new vessel for him if he were gone.”

“Yeah, well his kid seems to think he’s toast. Besides, it’s done now. Maybe we can get you a new copy of yourself. Unless you want something different?”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with Harvey,” Cas says.

And Harvey will be listening. Of course he will. They agreed, somewhere between Cas pinning Dean to the mattress and Harvey pulling him into the shower, that Harvey and Cas would each be aware when the other was driving, unless specifically requested. 

“Nothing’s wrong with Harvey,” Dean says. “That’s the problem, Cas. I don’t want him stuck-”

“Stuck?”

And that’s some flavour of hurt. 

“Not like that, man,” Dean says, even though he has no idea what he means. “Come on, you can’t really think Harvey wants to be your vessel his whole life. You remember what happened to Jimmy.”

Not the right thing to say. He knows it as soon as Cas’ face locks down, shutting out all emotion except for in his eyes, which are full of an emotion Dean can’t read.

“I remember,” Cas says, at last. 

Footsteps stop Dean from replying, and Sam appears in the kitchen doorway, his phone in his hand.

“Jody’s about half an hour out,” he says. “You get anything useful from Anna?”

“No,” Dean says, and wonders how Sam isn’t noticing the tension in the room. “No, she’s got nothing. Says she’ll keep thinking.”

Cas doesn’t bring up the vessel hunt, so Dean doesn’t, either. 

“Okay, well,” Sam says. “Here’s hoping you get some new lead from the vessel. Jody says she’s kind of freaked out, so take it easy on the weird, okay?”

“Okay,” Cas says. 

And that’s the end of their conversation about finding Cas a new vessel.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on tumblr. I'm [humanformdragon](http://humanformdragon.tumblr.com/).
> 
> [ExpatGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl) and I are exchanging ghost stories for Christmas, reviving a fine old Christmas tradition. They will be Destiel reworkings of ghost stories which will post on Christmas Eve. We'd love to have some other people join in. Any takers?
> 
> If so, it's Destiel, a ghost story based on a classic ghost tale/novel and it's a minimum of 3,000 words (but can go over if you want, of course)
> 
> My email is humanformdragon@gmail.com if anyone is interested.


End file.
